Item Description
This large bulbous copper vessel has a hammered body and is fitted with twin brass handles. It is meticulously assembled from three parts with an identifiable seam separating the lid, body, and base. Mentioned in religious, historical, and archaeological/anthropological writings, such vessels were used primarily for cooking dried fava beans in volume. Ramses II of Egypt is said to have offered 11,998 jars of fava beans to the god of the Nile and a substantial amount of such beans have been discovered in Twelfth Dynasty tombs. Fava beans are popular today in Egypt and elsewhere and normally require such a specially shaped vessel designed to minimize the amount of beans on top which might otherwise expose them to the air and cause them to become black, dry, and undercooked. Circa 1930s.
