Ball
Ball
(דּוּר, dur), well known as being used in various sports and games from the earliest times, several kinds of which are depicted on the Egyptian monuments (Wilkinson, 1:198 sq. abridg.). The word occurs in this sense in Isa 22:18, but in a subsequent chapter (29:3) it is employed of a ring or circle, and translated "round about" in the prophecy of the siege of Jerusalem. In Eze 24:5, in the symbol of the same event, it is translated "burn," but probably means heap, as in the margin.
Among the Egyptians the balls were made of leather or skin, sewed with string, crosswise, in the same manner as our own, and stuffed with bran or husks of corn; and those which have been found at Thebes are about three inches in diameter. Others were made of string, or of the stalks of rushes platted together so as to form a circular mass, and covered, like the former, with leather. They appear also to have a smaller kind of ball, probably of the same materials, and covered, like many of our own, with slips of leather of an elliptical shape, sewed together longitudinally, and meeting in a common point at both ends, each alternate slip being of a different color; but these have only been met with in pottery (Wilkinson, 1:200).
