Stone mills served us well in the business of turning grain into flour for thousands of years, but they couldn’t keep up with either population growth or new and better wheat. The roller mill came about through a succession of small inventions and the deep pockets of a few visionary entrepreneurs. They turned Minneapolis into the flour capital of the world.
Grinding grain by hand has always been considered women’s work, or, in the absence of women, suitable for slaves and suitably demeaning for prisoners of war. Maybe the most famous of those was Samson. The book of Judges (16:21) says, in the King James version:
But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.
I thought it might be fun to find an illustration for the series, and I did.
Samson turns the mill in prison by J James TissotSamson Grinding in Prison at Gaza by William Hole
There’s something very wrong with these depictions though. Samson’s mill would not be much good for grain (unless he were making something liked rolled oats). It is more like an olive or grape press.
Looking at a whole bunch of translations, many do not specify what it was that Samson was made to grind, but those that do specify grain. The original Hebrew is טוֹחֵ֖ן (thanks, Luigi) which Google Translate renders as “mill”.
I conclude that those painters, many others, and even Cecil B. De Mille, got it wrong. Some, however, did get it right.
Samson and the Philistines by Carl Bloch, 1863. Statens Museum for Kunst
I’m particularly charmed by this little picture.
Samson Working in the Corn Mill, ~1400 – 1410, Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ms. 33, fol. 146v
The rotary quern was perhaps the first labour-saving device. Using water power, rather than muscles, to turn the millstone made it even more efficient. Without watermills, it is doubtful whether ancient Romans could have enjoyed their bread and circuses. Because they require capital investment and skilled workers, watermills also set the trend for concentration in the food industry.
August 15th is Ferragosto, a big-time holiday in Italy that harks back to the Emperor Augustus and represents a well-earned rest after the harvest. It is also the Feast Day of the Assumption, the day on which, Catholics believe, the Virgin Mary was taken, body and soul, into heaven.
Is there a connection between them? And what does it have do with wheat?
Apologies to listeners in the southern hemisphere; this may not reflect your experience.
It has been a long time since anyone who wanted to eat bread had to first grind their wheat. Grinding, however, was absolutely fundamental to agricultural societies, and still is for some. Archaeologists can see how the work left its mark on the skeletons of the women who ground the corn in the valley of the Euphrates. Then, about 2500 years ago, in the area now called Catalonia, an unknown genius invented the first labour-saving device.
