Cereal Grains Through History

This online book has been created to compile and discuss the importance of cereal grains through human history. This will be highlighted through the appearance of grain in art, sculptures, paintings, and architecture in many cultures. Contents Africa +thumbGrain storage chambers (ghorfas) of Ksar Hadada, southern Tunisia. Ksar Hadada is a fortified granary village that was built by North African Berber communities to store grain and crops Americas +thumbAncient Mesoamerican relief sculpture of maize, National Museum of Anthropology of MexicothumbMaize sculpture, Moche culture, 300 AD, Larco Museum, Lima, PeruthumbStucco head of the Maya maize god from Campeche, Mexico, 550–850 ADthumbJaina Island ceramic statuette of the young Maya maize god emerging from an ear of corn, 600–900 ADthumbAztecs storing maize, Florentine Codex, 1540/1585thumbCultivation of maize, illustrated in the 16th-century Florentine CodexthumbSketch of 1845 model reaperthumbMcCormick reaper and twine binder in 1884thumbLithograph of a Wichita Village, probably in Oklahoma (1850-1875 A.D., USA)thumbAn 1836 lithograph of tortilla production in rural MexicothumbThe Veteran in a New FieldthumbSong of the Lark (1876, USA)thumbThe Reaper (1878, USA)thumb"Gift for the Grangers", 1873 print promoting U.S. farmers' organization. thumbPoster of maize-based foods, US Food Administration, 1918thumbThe 3-storey faceless depiction of Ceres atop the Chicago Board of Trade Building.New Jersey State Seal approved color versionthumbStatue of Ceres (Agriculture) by Dwight Dwinell atop the Vermont State House. Erected 1938; replaced by a new statue in 2018.thumbThe statue Agriculture, a representation of Ceres, atop the dome of the Vermont State HousethumbWater tower in Rochester, Minnesota being painted as an ear of maize, 2008thumbThe Corn Palace, partially decorated in July 2020, seen from North Main Street in Mitchell, South Dakota, United StatesthumbViews of "Field of Corn (with Osage Orange Trees)" a sculpture developed by Malcolm Cochran. It was dedicated 30 October 1994, in Sam and Eulalia Frantz Park, located at the southwest corner of Frantz Road and Rings Road. The work consists of 109 concrete ears of corn, each about six feet tall, placed in even rows. A row of text panels (photos 8-12) explaining the history of corn production was placed along a row of Osage orange trees. Field of Corn was the third sculpture in the Dublin Arts Council's Arts in Public Places project. The photographs were taken 21 April 2007.thumbA grist mill, c. 1880Making sweet sorghum molasses in rural Tennessee, 1933 China, Japan, East Asia +thumbNorthern Song era Chinese watermill for dehusking grain with a horizontal waterwheel ((960–1127 A.D., China)thumbGranary model, Han dynasty. Stoneware model granary canisters as these were funeral gifts, buried with the deceased as a symbol of wealth and to provide food in the afterlifethumbHan dynasty granary on Silk Road west of Dunhuang, ChinathumbMeiji period granary, Setagaya, Tokyo, JapanTwo rangkiang in a photo c. 1895 of rice granaries in the Minangkabau architectural style in Batipuh in the Padang Plateau, Sumatra, IndonesiathumbMillstone and rollerthumbModel grain millthumbDojima-Rice-Exchange-Osaka-by-Yoshimitsu-SasakithumbJapan - Rice Cultivation through the Four Seasons, 18th centurythumbEmperor Viewing Rice Harvest by Morimura Gito (Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery)thumbRice Cultivation through the Four Seasons Egypt +thumbSlab stele from mastaba tomb of Itjer at Giza (2435 B.C.E., Egypt)thumbConical loaves of bread as laid out in the Great Tomb, North Necropolis, Gebelein, 5th Dynasty (Old Kingdom) (2305 B.C.E., Egypt)thumbAgricultural scenes of threshing, a grain store, harvesting with sickles, digging, tree-cutting and ploughing from tomb of Nakht (15th Century B.C.E., Egypt)thumbA tomb relief depicts workers plowing the fields, harvesting the crops, and threshing the grain under the direction of an overseer, painting in the tomb of Nakht.thumbPainted limestone stela showing drinking beer by a straw (1300 B.C.E., Egypt)thumbPloughing with cattle in ancient Egypt. Painting from the burial chamber of Sennedjem (1200 B.C.E., Egypt)thumb|Sennedjem and Ti harvesting papyrusSennedjem and Ti harvesting papyrusthumbThreshing of wheat in ancient EgyptA scene from the tomb of Nakht at Thebes, showing the winnowing of the grain, to separate the husks from the grain.thumbFigures baking bread (2900 B.C.E., Egypt)thumbStele of Princess Nefertiabet eating; 2589–2566 BC; limestone & paint; 37.7 × 52.5 × 8.3 cm; from Giza; LouvrethumbSenenu Grinding Grain, c. 1352–1336 BC. The royal scribe Senenu appears here bent over a large grinding stone. This unusual sculpture seems to be an elaborate version of a shabti, a funerary figurine placed in the tomb to work in place of the deceased. Brooklyn Museum.thumbAncient Egyptian statuette of a woman grinding grainthumbEngraving of baking bread from tomb of Ramses, III (1155 B.C.E., Egypt)thumbFirst Dynasty Egyptian grain silo Europe +thumbPeasants sharing bread, from the Livre du roi Modus et de la reine Ratio (14th Century A.D., France)thumbAgricultural calendar from a manuscript of Pietro de Crescenzi (1470, Bologna, Italy)thumbThe Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel (1565 A.D., Belgium)thumbJethro Tull's seed drill, invented in 1701 (1765, England)thumbThe Wheat Field by John Constable, 1816thumbThe Sower (1850, France)thumbThe Gleaners (1857, France)thumbRye Field (1878, Russia)thumbWheat Field with Cypesses (1889, France)thumbWheat Field with Cypresses (1889, France)thumbWheat Field with Cypresses (1889, France)thumbWheat Field with Crows (1890, France)thumbWheat Field under Thunderclouds (1890, France)thumbLa Méridienne (1891, France)thumbBotanical illustration of leafy stem with roots, flowers, and 2- and 6-row earsthumbA: Plant; B ripe ear of corn; 1 spikelet before flowering; 2 the same, flowering and spread, enlarged; 3 flowers with glumes; 4 stamens 5 pollen; 6 and 7 ovaries with juice scales; 8 and 9 parts of the scar; 10 fruit husks; 11, 12, 13 seeds, natural size and enlarged; 14 the same cut up, enlarged.thumbMaize: (a) Lower part of the plant (b) top of plant with male inflorescense (c) middle of plant with female inflorescenses (d) ear/cob: (1) two pollen grains of a male inflorescense (3, 4) female flowers (5) female flowers with stigma (6) fruit bottom view (7) fruit side view (8) fruit cross-section viewsthumbAnatomy of rice flowers: spikelet (left), plant with tillers (centre), caryopsis (top right), panicle (right)thumbDuring her long, torch-lit search for her daughter, Proserpina, Ceres drinks water given her by Hecuba, and is mocked by the boy, Askalabos, for spilling some of it. She will transform him into a lowly "star-lizard' or newt (Latin; stellio) as punishment. The episode is in Ovid's, Metamorphoses V, lines 449-450. Oil-paint on copper, by Adam Elsheimer and workshop, copy circa 1605, held by the Museo Nacional del Prado. From an original in the collection of Alfred and Isabel BaderthumbCeres with cereals, a late 18th century work by Dominik Auliczek of the Nymphenburg Porcelain ManufactorythumbCeres by Eugène-André Oudiné on a French coin of 1873 (3rd Republic).thumbTraditional barley harvest by hand with scythes, England, c. 1886. Photo Peter Henry EmersonthumbGrain House floor of Mildenstein Castle (built around 1395), GermanythumbCambridgeshire handbells in wheat strawthumbClaidheach harvest corn dolly Greece & Rome +thumbBarley was a symbol of wealth in the city of Metapontum in Magna Graecia (i.e. the Greek colonies of southern Italy), stamped stater (530–510 B.C.E., Greece)thumbDemeter on a Didrachme from Paros island, struck at the CycladesthumbDenarius picturing Quirinus on the obverse, and Ceres enthroned on the reverse, a commemoration by a moneyer in 56 BC of a Cerialia, perhaps her first ludi, presented by an earlier Gaius Memmius as aedile.thumbEmperors claimed a partnership with Ceres in grain provision, as in this sestertius of 66 AD. Left: Nero, garlanded. Right: Annona stands with cornucopiae (horns of Plenty); enthroned Ceres holds grain-ears and torch; between is a modius (grain measure) on a garlanded altar; in the background is a ship's stern.thumbDemeter, goddess of grainthumbDemeter, enthroned and extending her hand in a benediction toward the kneeling Metaneira, who offers the triune wheat (c. 340 B.C.E.)thumbThe Eleusinian trio: Persephone, Triptolemus and Demeter (Roman copy dating to the Early Imperial period and hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of the Great Eleusinian Reliefin the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, marble bas-relief from Eleusis, 440–430 B.C.E.)thumbPlouton with a cornucopia and Demeter with a sceptre and plough. By the Orestes Painter. 440-430 B.C.E. thumbTwo female figures, probably Demeter and Persephone. Attic white calyx crater 440-430 B.C.E. thumbTerracotta Demeter figurine, Sanctuary of the Underworld Divinities, Akragas, 550–500 B.C.E.thumbDemeter of Knidos, Hellenistic marble sculpture, around 350 B.C.E. The statue of Saint Demetra, Fitzwilliam MuseumthumbTerracotta plaque relief of Demeter in profile wearing ears of corn, 1st century BC–AD, Archaeological Museum of Amorgos, Greece.thumbTriptolemus, Demeter and Persephone by the Triptolemos-painter, c. 470 B.C.E., LouvrethumbDionysus (Bacchus) and Demeter (Ceres), antique fresco in Stabiae, 1st centuryDemeter drives her horse-drawn chariot containing her daughter Persephone-Kore at Selinunte, Sicily, 6th century BC.thumbDemeter in mourning, marble relief from Knossos, Archaeological Museum of Heraklion.thumbRoman copy of 4th century BC Greek bust (National Roman Museum)thumbDemeter orders Famine to strike Erysichthon, Elisha Whittelsey CollectionthumbDemeter in an ancient Greek fresco from Panticapaeum, 1st century Crimea.thumbA bread stall, from a Pompeiian wall paintingthumbHead of a statue of Demeter, marble, Roman imperial period, 2nd century CEthumbStatue of Demeter by Leonidas Drosis in the façade of the Academy of Athens, Greece.thumbThe goddess Ceres, seated. Marble sculpture from the latter part of the 1st century CE. National Museum of Roman Art of Mérida (ancient Emerita Augusta), where there is a copy in front of the magnificent ruins of the Roman theatrethumbStatuette of a goddess, probably Ceres Roman Bronze 50-75 CEthumbAncient Greek geometric art funeral gift box in the shape of granaries, 850 BC. On display in the Ancient Agora Museum in Athens, housed in the Stoa of AttalosthumbGallo-Roman harvester India, Indus River Valley +thumbBas-relief of 9th century Borobudur in Indonesia describes rice barns and rice plants infested by mice.thumbGolghar granary built in 1786, Patna, India Mesopotamia, Persia, Middle East +thumbUruk King priest feeding the sacred herdthumbAn early writing tablet for recording the allocation of beer, 3100–3000 BC, from Iraq. British Museum, LondonthumbA cuneiform tablet about an administrative account, with entries concerning malt and barley groats, 3100–2900 BC. Clay, 6.8 x 4.5 x 1.6 cm, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York CitythumbA bill of sale of a field and a house, from Shuruppak, c. 2600 BC. Height: 8.5 cm, width: 8.5 cm, depth: 2 cm. The LouvrethumbAn account of barley rations issued monthly to adults and children written in cuneiform script on a clay tablet, written in year 4 of King Urukagina, c. 2350 BCthumbAlulu beer receipt recording a purchase of "best" beer from a brewer, c. 2050 BCE, from the Sumerian city of Umma in ancient IraqthumbHymn to NinkasithumbPhilistine pottery beer jugthumbRock mortars in Raqefet Cave, used to make beer during the Stone AgethumbPersian panemones, Sistan, IranthumbAncient Windmills of NashtifanthumbSumerian harvester's sickle, 3000 BC, made from baked claythumbGranaries from an Iron Age Israelite fortress in the Negev, reconstructed at Derech Hadorot, Hecht Museum, HaifathumbGasr Al-Hājj (exterior)thumbGasr Al-Hājj (interior)