Thank you, Gary. Interesting information and analysis. Good points regarding leaf color not likely being the identifying characteristic. (Wonder how they arrived at that explanation?) When you mention the colors of proso (I'll stay with that name here, rather than switching with broomcorn millet), I'm assuming you mean the seecoat? Or are there dehulled grains of proso that are darker? (I have seen, bought, and eaten "black" foxtail millet from China - the grains are actually gray (dehulled). It was good, but was not struck by a taste difference from the usual yellow varieties. There is also "white" foxtail. But I have never encountered proso of a darker hue.) Regarding the westward spread of proso (Panicum miliaceum) and foxtail (Setaria italica) from what is now China, I was curious to see if any research discusses millets in the Middle East. My general semi-researched impression was that proso traveled further north and foxtail further south across Eurasia, but unsurprisingly it's definitely not that simple. Here's a long tangent... I see articles and maps about a recent research on proso's spread to Europe,/1/2/3 which dates that to 1600-1200 BCE (see maps; 1600 BCE is north of the Black Sea). Another article discusses proso and to a limited extent foxtail on a more southerly trajectory south of the Caspian Sea, which would put proso in northern Mesopotamia well before Ezekiel's time, and foxtail - possibly from a separate domestication? (surprise!) - in the Caucasus even earlier./4 Yet another covers the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia, with attention to several crops./5 Among the maps are one for proso (fig. 3) and one for foxtail (fig. 4). The latter differs a bit from what's in Martin et al, 2021, but it seems like both proso and foxtail could have been in Mesopotamia by the time of Ezekiel. Another more recent one focuses on proso and rice in West Asia, but with menton of sites with foxtail./6 Altogether, it seems from the above that altho both proso and foxtail could have been in Mesopotamia -- and perhaps by extension the whole Fertile Crescent? - proso may have been there earlier and more prominent later? But what about pearl millet? None of the articles above mention pearl millet, which they certainly would have if grains of this crop were found in the sites discussed.. We know that pearl millet originated in Sahelian Africa, and spread east to South Asia by 1000 BCE./7 One article suggests that pearl millet came by land and sea perhaps as early as 2000 BCE./8 A map accompanying the latter proposes several routes, including a northerly one from Egypt, east across the Levant and southern Mesopotamia to what is now India. (I don't have access to the full article.) Unfortunately, there's not much I can find on the dissemination of pearl millet. Regarding sorghum, the picture is a bit more complicated, given that there are 5 races (bicolor, guinea, caudatum, kafir and durra). Cultivation originated in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Africa, and by 2000-1700 BCE was in Late Harappan India (Indus valley civilization)./9 (This article, to which I don't have full access, includes a map showing varieties and indicating dissemination routes.). Another article also includes a map showing dissemination from East Africa across Arabia and southern Mesopotamia (durra race), as well as across the Indian Ocean, to India (bicolor and kaffir), with oen variety (caudatum) stopping in southern Arabia./10 I can't vouch for all these maps, of course, which summarize research I have not fully digested. Anyway, the ancient pathways of these millets - which are among the world's first globalized crops - are fascinating to consider. Thanks again for your input Gary. It may indeed be that there were darker seeded varieties of proso in the Middle East in Ezekiel's time. Could it have been that *all* millets in that epoch tended to be darker, and that a bias to lighter grains over the ages led to selection that has given us the lighter varieties that dominate today? Best to all. Don DO, EL, MI, US NAMA Notes: 1. Filipović, D., Meadows, J., Corso, M.D. *et al.* "New AMS 14C dates track the arrival and spread of broomcorn millet cultivation and agricultural change in prehistoric Europe." *Scientific Reports* *10*, 13698 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70495-z 2. "The spread of millet from East Asia to Central Europe," Phys.org 10 June 2022 https://phys.org/news/2022-06-millet-east-asia-central-europe.html 3. "Millet in the Bronze Age: A Superfood conquers the World: A research team at Kiel University has reconstructed in detail the spread of the grain from East Asia to Central Europe," 7 June 2022 https://www.uni-kiel.de/en/details/news/081-hirse-superfood 4. Martin, L., Messager, E., Bedianashvili, G. et al. "The place of millet in food globalization during Late Prehistory as evidenced by new bioarchaeological data from the Caucasus. *Scientific Reports* 11, 13124 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92392-9 5. Stevens CJ, Murphy C, Roberts R, Lucas L, Silva F, Fuller DQ. "Between China and South Asia: A Middle Asian corridor of crop dispersal and agricultural innovation in the Bronze Age." *Holocene*. 2016 Oct;26(10):1541-1555. doi: 10.1177/0959683616650268. Epub 2016 Jun 1. PMID: 27942165; PMCID: PMC5125436. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27942165/ 6. Huang, Yunshi & Deng, Zhenhua & Fazeli Nashli, Hassan & Fuller, Dorian & Wu, Xiaohong & Safari, Mojtaba. (2023). "The early adoption of East Asian crops in West Asia: rice and broomcorn millet in northern Iran." *Antiquity*. 97. 10.15184/aqy.2023.42. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369945735_The_early_adoption_of_Eas... 7. Khairwal, I & Rai, K & Diwakar, B & Sharma, Yugal & Rajpurohit, B & Nirwan, Bindu & Bhattacharjee, Ranjana. (2007). Pearl Millet Crop Management and Seed Production Manual. (The map accompanying the article uses 3000 BP - before present - which I converted to BCE to harmonize with other references in this post.) 8. Singh, A.K. "Early presence/introduction of African and East Asian millets in India: integral to traditional agriculture." Nucleus 66, 261–271 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13237-023-00435-5 9. Kamala Venkateswaran, M. Elangovan, N. Sivaraj, Chapter 2 - Origin, Domestication and Diffusion of Sorghum bicolor, In C. Aruna, K.B.R.S. Visarada, B. Venkatesh Bhat, Vilas A. Tonapi, eds, Breeding Sorghum for Diverse End Uses, Woodhead Publishing, 2019, Pages 15-31. ISBN 9780081018798, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-101879-8.00002-4. On Wed, Sep 11, 2024 at 9:52 PM Gary Wietgrefe via Collab < collab@lists.millets2023.space> wrote:
*Biblical millet*: Color, agronomics, and social status should be added to the interesting discussion on Ezekiel 4:9.
*Color*: Seed color is most likely why both Hebrew and Arabic references "smokey." It is highly unlikely the gray color was referring to the millet plant or leaf as suggested by McClintock and Strong. Proso has had many colors over the centuries, with white, yellow, and red are he common colors in the 21st century. *Example 1*: see pages 181-189 in my book (5) (PDF) How to Produce Proso Millet: A Farmer's Guide (researchgate.net) <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284179184_How_to_Produce_Proso_Millet_A_Farmer's_Guide> where I listed 1920s U.S. proso varieties varying in color from creamy (off) white (White Ural), brownish yellow (Hanson white Siberian), reddish brown (red Russian), and brownish black (Black Voronezh).
*Example 2*: Crown, a 20th-century proso variety with seed color gray-green, was developed by Canada. Some old research claimed the Corn Belt weed, wild proso millet, with dark red turning into black seeded weeds supposedly initially came from planting Crown. Recent research suggests otherwise The Biology of Canadian Weeds: 155. Panicum miliaceum L. (cdnsciencepub.com) <https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/cjps-2015-0152#sec-2-3>. See seed colors Figure 7 of Proso millet | ontario.ca <https://www.ontario.ca/page/proso-millet#:~:text=Proso%20millet%20was%20first%20introduced%20to%20Canada%20in,as%20a%20forage%20crop%20in%20the%20early%201900%27s.> .
*Example 3*: Argentina's *plata* (yellow or silver) proso millet still has remnants of gray (smokey) seed coat. See PRODUCTS – El Campo S.A (elcamposa.com.ar) <https://en.elcamposa.com.ar/products/>.
*Example 4*: "Proso" in North America and Europe is the current name *Panicum miliaceum*, but as the world's "common" millet, it has had many names including "*browncorn*" millet. Varieties around the world often referred to production location or seed color. I have never found an agronomic reference to proso leaf or plant color to identify the crop.
*Agronomics*: All crops have moved over the years, but even with good breeding agronomics force crops to certain latitudes. Argentine and Australian production of proso in the southern hemisphere is at comparable latitudes of proso production in North America, Europe, and Asia. After the Soviet Union state farms collapsed, I reintroduced U.S. varieties of proso in Mongolia comparing it to local and Russian varieties. See my 2022 research paper (5) (PDF) Ancient Proso Millet and the Twentieth Century Survival of Mongolia (researchgate.net) <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358270886_Ancient_Proso_Millet_and_the_Twentieth_Century_Survival_of_Mongolia>. In the late 1990s I reintroduced proso millet in Turkey since it was an early source of U.S. varieties. See (5) (PDF) Effect of Seeding Rate and Nitrogen Fertilization on Proso Millet Under Dryland and Irrigated Conditions (researchgate.net) <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233118183_Effect_of_Seeding_Rate_and_Nitrogen_Fertilization_on_Proso_Millet_Under_Dryland_and_Irrigated_Conditions> .
Ezekiel ate millet while living along Nebuchadnezzar's private canal on the Chebar River near Nippur in what is now eastern Iraq which would have been the southern belt of ancient proso production. In 1903 E.A. Bessey working for USDA introduced in the U.S. the yellowish-brown Turghai from Russia or Siberia. In 1968 Colorado's breeding program released the yellow-tan colored Leonard from seed collected earlier from Afghanistan. I haven't found sources of U.S. varieties collected in Iraq or Iran, but I seriously doubt they produced white varieties so common today. Who knows? Farmers have always kept back proso seed to plant the following year. They still do. They certainly did to supply their prophet Ezekiel.
*Social*: Ezekiel was a prophet of high status even as a captive where he lived in his own home under Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. Though he lived on about eight ounces of coarse bread while laying on his side prophesying for 190 or possibly 390 (depending on the translation), he would have been supplied with grains by his followers. I can't imagine old Ezek out in the field looking for a smokey colored plant.
Thanks Don for bringing the topic forward....Gary Wietgrefe
On Tue, Sep 10, 2024 at 12:44 AM <collab-request@lists.millets2023.space> wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Which "millet" is in the Biblical verse, Ezekiel 4:9? (Don Osborn) 2. Re: Official Request, Seeking Importers of Millets from NAMA. (saiway_in@outlook.com)
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Message: 1 Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2024 12:55:51 -0400 From: Don Osborn <don@milletsalliance.org> To: Dipak Santra <dsantra2@unl.edu> Cc: "collab@lists.millets2023.space" <collab@lists.millets2023.space> Subject: Re: [Collab] Which "millet" is in the Biblical verse, Ezekiel 4:9? Message-ID: < CA+RHibWhu4+dJDxDk0Y_MHK8tRg7D97BfRFmwzf++_QfTb8QyA@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Thank you for the feedback, Dipak.
Here's a question: Could one describe the leaves of proso millet as having a "dark-green or smoky color," as the McClintock and Strong source does? I would have placed proso plants more or less in the middle of a spectrum of greens, along with many other crops. Anyway, that source seems to cite something for this that I can't find online - "Sept. ???????,Vulg. nzilium."
Another site has a page with commentary from several sources: https://reformadoresdasaude.com/dicb/?sis=3683 . Some of those mention sorghum as a possibility One of them mentions foxtail (as Italian millet), but also states that proso ("common millet") was "cultivated in Egypt in very ancient times," which other sources would not agree with. Recall also that there appears to be evidence of pearl millet in ancient Egypt (at least one source suggests there is not, but see below). To be clear, wheat and barley were by far the dominant crops in Egypt's Nile valley.
One article by Dorian Q. Fuller and Leilani Lucas ("Savanna on the Nile: Long?term Agricultural Diversification and Intensification in Nubia," in E. Emberling & B.B. Williams, eds., *The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia*, 2021,
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10119133/1/Nubia%20handbook%20final%20... ) notes evidence of sorghum and pearl millet in some sites in Nubia and up into oasis areas of Egypt. Proso/broomcorn millet is mentioned in the later Meroitic period. (Interested to note also mention of "a lost indigenous foxtail millet, Setaria sphaceleata" - which, rather than foxtail millet, S. italica, was apparently also cultivated there in ancient times.)
In any event, Egypt, with its dominant flooding agriculture, is a different situation than either Nubia or the Levant, which in turn are in different climate and agro-ecological zones. Anyway, it's complicated.
In addition to better understanding what millets were grown where and when in the Middle East, cultural and historical factors during the time of Ezekiel would be helpful in reviewing the question of which millet was being referred to in Ezekiel 4:9.
Anyway, that's all I have now on this...
Don
DO, EL, MI, US NAMA
On Sun, Sep 8, 2024 at 9:44?PM Dipak Santra <dsantra2@unl.edu> wrote:
Don, Wow?. Amazing fact?I will keep this question in mind while searching literature.
Thank you very much for sharing this.
Dipak
Get Outlook for iOS <https://aka.ms/o0ukef> ------------------------------ *From:* Collab <collab-bounces@lists.millets2023.space> on behalf of Don Osborn <don@milletsalliance.org> *Sent:* Sunday, September 8, 2024 6:24:30 PM *To:* collab@lists.millets2023.space <collab@lists.millets2023.space> *Subject:* [Collab] Which "millet" is in the Biblical verse, Ezekiel 4:9?
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Even if you haven't read the Bible, you may have seen the one verse from it that mentions "millet" on a brand of sprouted bread and cereal named after that verse: Ezekiel 4:9.
"Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof; according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, even three hundred and ninety days, shalt thou eat thereof." Ezekiel 4:9 (ASV)/1
But do we know what millet it was exactly?
The Hebrew is ?????? (do'chan), which more than one source on the Bible say is Panicum miliaceum (proso or broomcorn millet). One of those sources, the authoritative *McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia* is among those commentaries./2
That source also notes the Arabic cognate, ????? (du?n), which it says also refers to P. miliaceum. However, Wehr and Cowan's authoritative *A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic* (3rd ed., 1976) defines the term as pearl millet, i.e., Pennisetum glaucum./3
Both the Hebrew and Arabic words come from roots that also denote smoke. McClintock and Strong see the connection with proso as being "the dark-green or smoky color of the leaf." However, one should also note that the grains of pearl millet typically have a greyish hue, that might be called a smoky color as well.
Another source on the Bible, says that the Arabic word is used "to describe two different kinds of millet" (which it does not specify)./4 That might remove the ambiguity in favor of the Hebrew word meaning P. miliaceum - if perhaps the two millets in Arabic are proso and pearl.
However, it would be useful to consult work of historians and ethnobotanists on the dissemination of these two crops in the ancient Middle East - one coming from China and the other from West Africa.
A shallow dive on the latter suggestion ...
It's hard from researching online to get any clear answer, and I'm under no illusion that "doing my own research" on the internet about common names for millets in ancient languages would refute the conclusions of Biblical scholars. However, having worked along the boundaries of domain expertise, where understandable errors can be made and overlooked, I would not be astonished if a valid case could be made for pearl millet in the Book of Ezekiel.
There has been research and discussion about how the African-origin millets - pearl millet, sorghum, and finger millet - made their way to India./5 It is also known that on the one hand, pearl millet was in Egypt fairly early, and that proso was in Sudanese Nubia for a time, even though there's apparently no evidence for it in Egypt or Mesopotamia. While proso disseminated across Eurasia to Europe, did it also follow a sea-coast route from Asia to Nubia (the reverse of what has been posited for African millets to India)?
All of this, by the way, before the time of the Book of Ezekiel. Could proso have become the or an established millet in the Middle East in the time of Ezekiel? Keep in mind that its cultivation in Nubia did not endure. What of pearl millet in the region during this period?
Anyway, lots of questions.
Don
Don Osborn, PhD (East Lansing, MI, US) North American Millets Alliance
Notes: 1. https://www.bible.com/bible/compare/EZK.4.9 < https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.bible.com/bible/compare/EZK.4.9__;!!...
2. https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/M/millet.html < https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/M/millet.html...
3.
https://ia803408.us.archive.org/3/items/dictionary-of-modern-written-arabic-...
< https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ia803408.us.archive.org/3/items/dictiona...
(scroll to p; 275) 4. https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/encyclopedia-of-the-bible/Millet < https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/encyclope...
5.
https://dispatchesfromturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-did-african-crop...
< https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://dispatchesfromturtleisland.blogspot.com/...
(a discussion about research, including by noted millets scholar Dorian Q. Fuller)