166 Singing Valleys 



granary a clerk keeps record of the sacks of grain which slaves 

 carry on their backs up a flight of steps to dump into the bins. 

 In the brewery, male slaves pound the mash, or tramp it with 

 their feet. In the bakery, other male slaves under the direction 

 of an overseer mix and knead the loaves preparatory to placing 

 them in the waiting ovens. The only female figures in these 

 models, which preserve a faithful record of activities some four 

 thousand years ago, are two women kneeling at saddle-stones 

 within the bakery. They are grinding the flour for the use of 

 the men bakers. 



The saddle-stones used in Prince Meket-Ra's bakery are 

 identical with many seen in Mexican villages today, or in the 

 Indian pueblos of our southwest. Like all that have been found 

 in countries east of the Atlantic, they are simply fashioned 

 and without ornamentation of any kind. But every important 

 collection of Mayan and Aztec objects has a number of metates 

 sculptured in the form of dragons or frogs symbols connected 

 with rain-making ceremonies for the fertility of the fields. 

 Others carry the snakes of Coatlicue, the Earth Mother. Not 

 infrequently the snakes have seven rattles to commemorate 

 one aspect of the goddess, "Woman of the Seven Snakes." 

 These present us, too, with an American version of the rain- 

 rattles that were shaken before Ishtar, Isis, Cybele and all other 

 earth and grain deities. 



With the American tribes the metate and the mortar, either 

 of stone or of wood, remained the only form of mill until the 

 Europeans brought the idea of using water or wind to turn 

 grinding stones. The metate seems not to have crossed the 

 Great Plains and the Mississippi to the Atlantic littoral. 

 Squanto taught the men of Plymouth how to make beech and 

 oaken mortars in which the first corn harvest was pounded into 

 meal. The rhythmic thump-thump of the heavy pestles on the 

 wood resounded throughout Plymouth until, in 1623, the 

 Council authorized "a water-work to beat corn, not to inter- 

 fere with the intending gris ting-mill." The toll, fixed by the 

 Council, was "one pottle per bushel." 



