Fig. 241—Cooking Lentiles
Lentiles appear to have been chiefly used for making a kind of pottage. The red pottage for which Esau bartered his birthright was of lentiles (). The term red was, as with us, extended to yellowish brown, which must have been the true color of the pottage, if derived from lentiles. The Greeks and Romans also called lentiles red. Lentiles were among the provisions brought to David when he fled from Absalom (), and a field of lentiles was the scene of an exploit of one of David's heroes (). From , it would appear that lentiles were sometimes used as bread. This was, doubtless, in times of scarcity, or by the poor. Sonnini assures us that in southernmost Egypt, where corn is comparatively scarce, lentiles mixed with a little barley form almost the only bread in use among the poorer classes. It is called bettan, is of a golden yellow color, and is not bad, although rather heavy. In that country, indeed, probably even more than in Palestine, lentiles anciently, as now, formed a chief article of food among the laboring classes. Large quantities of lentiles were exported from Alexandria. Pliny, in mentioning two Egyptian varieties, incidentally lets us know that one of them was red, by remarking that they like a red soil, and by speculating whether the pulse may not have thence derived the reddish color which it imparted to the pottage made with it. This illustrates Jacob's red pottage. Dr. Shaw, also states that these lentiles easily dissolve in boiling, and form a red or chocolate colored pottage, much esteemed in North Africa and Western Asia. Putting these facts together, it is likely that the reddish lentil, which is now so common in Egypt, is the sort to which all these statements refer.
The tomb-paintings actually exhibit the operation of preparing pottage of lentiles, or, as Wilkinson describes it, 'a man engaged in cooking lentiles for a soup or porridge; his companion brings a bundle of faggots for the fire, and the lentiles themselves are seen standing near him in wicker baskets.' The lentiles of Palestine have been little noticed by travelers.
Fig. 242—Lentiles—Cicer lens
The lentil is an annual plant, and the smallest of all the leguminosae which are cultivated. It rises with a weak stalk about eighteen inches high, having pinnate leaves at each joint composed of several pairs of narrow leaflets, and terminating in a tendril, which supports it by fastening about some other plant. The small flowers, which come out of the sides of the branches on short peduncles, three or four together, are purple, and are succeeded by the short and flat legumes, which contain two or three flat round seeds slightly curved in the middle. The flower appears in May, and the seeds ripen in July. When ripe, the plants are rooted up, if they have been sown along with other plants, as is sometimes done; but they are cut down when grown by themselves. They are threshed, winnowed, and cleaned like corn.
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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