BOTTLE. The first bottles were probably made of the skins of animals. In the Iliad (iii. 247), the attendants are represented as bearing wine for use in a bottle made of goat's skin, Ἀσκήδαι αἰγείῳ. The ancient Egyptians used skins for this purpose, and from the language employed by Herodotus (ii. 121), it appears that a bottle was formed by sewing up the skin and leaving the projection of the leg and foot to serve as a cork; hence it was termed πύκνος. This aperture was closed with a plug or a string. Skin-bottles of various forms occur on Egyptian monuments. The Greeks and Romans also were accustomed to use bottles made of skins; and in the southern parts of Europe they are still used for the transport of wine. The first clear notice of them in Scripture occurs in Joshua (ix. 4), where it is said that the Gibeonites took "old sacks upon their asses, and wine-bottles old and rent and bound up." Our Saviour's language is thus clearly explained: "Men do not put new wine into old bottles, else the bottles break." Skins are still most extensively used throughout Western Asia for water.
It is an error to represent bottles as being made exclusively of skins among the ancient Hebrews (Jones, Biblical Cyclopaedia, in voc.) The Egyptians possessed vases, bottles, &c., of hard stone, alabaster, glass, ivory, bone, porcelain, bronze, silver, or gold; and also, for the use of the people generally, of glazed pottery or common earthenware. As early as Thothmes III., assumed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus, B.C. 1490, vases existed of a shape so elegant and of workmanship so superior, as to show that the art was
not, even then, in its infancy. The British Museum contains a fine collection of these articles. The process of making glass bottles is described under the head GLASS. Perhaps the largest manufactory of wine bottles in the world is at Folembay in France, which is said to produce no fewer than eight millions annually. See GLASS.