• latw-68-1
    Iron grater from a Lydian house. (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)

    Iron grater

    Date
    Before mid-6th c BC, Lydian
    Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
    M84.017
    Material
    Iron
    Object Type
    Metalwork
    Metalwork Type
    Miscellaneous
    Site
    Sardis
    Sector
    MMS
    Trench
    MMS-I 84.1
    Locus
    MMS-I 84.1 Locus 34
    B-Grid Coordinates
    E147 / S67.9
    Description
    Iron. Rectangular sheet reinforced along the long sides by two narrow strips, one of which has slipped out of position and lies diagonally across the sheet. (The method of attachment has not been identified.) The main sheet was perforated with many small holes, ca. 33-35 across the length, ca. 19-20 across the width. Main sheet: length 0.152 m, width 0.093 m, thickness 0.002 m. Width of narrow strips ca. 0.008 m and 0.004 m.
    Comments
    From a Lydian house destroyed in the mid-sixth century BC (Area 1, with Nos. 16, 62, 64, 65, 66, 72, 73, 75, 81, 87, 88, 96, 97, 100, 102, 103, 137, 138), together with two cooking pots and stand No. 62.

    Grated bread (knestos artos) was an ingredient of the Lydian stew called kandaulos, and was used in Ionia, according to Hegisippos of Tarentum, as preserved in Athenaeus 12.516d, and Artemidorus of Ephesus, as preserved in Athenaeus 3.111d.

    For a copper grater from a tomb of the 6th century BC at Ialysos on Rhodes, see Jacopi 1929, 192 and fig. 186.

    See Also
    Cahill, “City of Sardis”; Greenewalt, “Bon Appetit”; Cahill, “Persian Sack”.
    Bibliography
    Cahill in Greenewalt et al. 1988, 28.
    Author
    NDC