Sara Tal and Yair Amitsur with the find (Photo by Elon Glick IAA)
Once again, a major archeological find was made in Israel by IDF soldiers. The soldiers discovered a large ancient vessel made of basalt – a mortar – which was used to grind grain which they found in a wrapping in a military assembly area near Gaza.
This is the second time in the past two weeks that IDF soldiers made such a discovery. At the end of December several reservists discovered a 1,500-year-old oil lamp dating back to the Byzantine period and did the right thing, they turned in their find. That discovery was also made at an IDF encampment near Gaza and neither would have been made had it not been for the ongoing war in Gaza.
The soldiers who made the latest find included one who serves as an archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority.
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Lt. Col. Yair Amitsur, the commander of the civilian front in Division 143, and Lt. Col. Elyashiv Bohbot, who serves as the second rabbi of the division, are the ones who discovered the tool made of basalt, which weighs more than 10 kg.
“As part of the routine field patrols in the Otaf sector, our eye was caught by a pile of soil on the side of the road, from which a round basalt block stood out,” said Bohbot. “We pulled the block out and it turned out that it was a fairly large and heavy tool.”
“Basalt is familiar to us from the north of the country or from other remote areas,” explained Amitsur. “In light of this, it is clear that the tool we found was brought here from afar, and was probably used in the past in the home of one of the residents of the area to grind grain or other products – an operation that was done with the help of a heavy rod, called an ali.”
Mortars of the type found now were generally used for grinding and crushing dry products such as grains, lentils, etc. The crushing tools, which allowed, among other things, the preparation of flour, which was a popular commodity, were common in homes, while in industrial areas millstones were used to grind quantities of flour greatness.
Sara Tal, Western Negev archaeologist from the Antiquities Authority, said that the grinding was been preserved in an “extraordinary way.” Such tools were used in a variety of periods, from the biblical times to the Mamluk period, she explained.
