BOURKE. ] UNLEAVENED BREAD. 543 
Nothing would be more in consonance with the mode of reasoning of 
a primitive people than that, at certain designated festivals, there should 
be a recurrence to the earlier forms of food, a reversion to an earlier 
mode of life, as a sort of propitiation of the gods or goddesses who 
had cared for the nation in its infancy and to secure the continuance of 
their beneficent offices. Primitive man was never so certain of the 
power of the gods of the era of his own greatest development that he 
could rely upon it implicitly and exclusively and ignore the deities who 
had helped him to stand upon his feet. Hence, the recurrence to pan- 
cakes, to unleavened breads of all kinds, among various peoples. This 
view of the subject was made plain to me while among the Zuni In- 
dians. Mr. Frank H. Cushing showed me that the women, when bak- 
ing the “loaves” of bread, were always careful to place in the adobe 
ovens a tortilla with each batch of the newer kind, and no doubt for 
the reason just given. 
UNLEAVENED BREAD. 
The unleavened bread of the earliest period of Jewish history has 
come down to our own times in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, still 
observed by the Hebrews in all parts of the world, in the bread used in 
the eucharistic sacrifice by so large a portion of the Christian world, 
and apparently in some of the usages connected with the half-under- 
stood fast known as the ‘* Ember Days.” Brand quotes from an old 
work in regard to the Ember Days: ‘They were so called ‘because 
that our elder fathers wolde on these days ete no brede but eakes made 
under ashes.’”! 
The sacred cake or “ draona” of the Parsi ‘is a small round pancake 
or wafer of unleavened bread, about the size of the palm of the hand. 
It is made of wheaten flour and water, with alittle clarified butter, and 
is flexible.”* A variety of the “draona,” called a ‘“ frasast,” is marked 
with the finger nail and set aside for the guardian spirits of the de- 
parted.* 
Cakes and salt were used in religious rites by the ancients. The 
Jews probably adopted their appropriation from the Egyptians! ‘‘ Dur- 
bread. The mere mention of unleayened bread shows that there were two kinds of bread made even at 
that time. 
The art of baking was carried on to a high perfection among the Egyptians, who are said to have 
baked cakes in many fantastic shapes, using several kinds of flour. The Romans took up the art of 
baking, and public bakeries were numerous on the streets of Rome. In England the business of the 
baker was considered to be one so closely affecting the interests of the public that in 1266 an act of 
Parliament was passed regulating the price to be charged for bread. This regulation continued in 
operation until 1822 in London and until 1836 in the rest of the country. The art of making bread has 
not yet reached some countries in Europe and Asia. In the rural parts of Sweden no bread is made, 
but rye cakes are baked twice a year and are as hard as flint. It is less than a century ago tha! bread 
was used in Scotland, the Scotch people of every class living on barley bannocks and oaten cakes.— 
Chicago News. 
! Pop. Antiq., vol. 1, p. 96. 
? Shayast l4-Shayast, par. 32, note 6, pp. 283,284 (Max Miiller's ed., Oxford, 1880). 
SIbid., p. 315, note 3. 
‘And if thou bring an oblation of a meat offering baken in the oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of 
fine flour" (Levit., II, 4); “With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt ” (Ibid., 13)—Brand, Pop. Ant., 
vol. 2, p. 82. 
