158 - Pair of mortars; 18th–19th centuries.

Pair of mortars; 18th–19th centuries. Marble. Measurements: 13 x 26 cm. Provenance: Family legacy of Ramon Martí Alsina and Ricard Martí Aguiló. Archaeological collection formed from the 1950s by successive generations of the family, through acquisitions in European galleries and auction houses. Ancient cookbooks contain a large number of recipes that rely on the use of a mortar, a tool that, although rarely used today, was once so versatile that every kitchen had a wide variety of them—from the largest, used for pounding meat and vegetables, to the smallest, used for grinding spices. Even in antiquity, there were large mortars made of bronze for crushing and mixing marble or lime, which were used to produce construction binders or plaster, such as stucco. The Roman poet Juvenal mentioned it in articles on the preparation of medicines, reflecting the early use of this tool in apothecaries. The antiquity of mortars is also very well documented in some works of ancient literature, such as the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, which dates to 1550 B.C. and is considered one of the oldest medical texts from Ancient Egypt. It is also mentioned in the Old Testament.