Footnote 5 – Is the Cultic Installation at Dan Really an Olive Press?
Stager points out that “virgin oil” was still being used in sanctuary lamps in this century in Artas, a Moslem community near Bethlehem. G. M. Crowfoot and L. Baldensperger, in From Cedar to Hyssop (New York, 1932), pp. 28–29, describe the oil manufacturing this way:
“There is a rock face with a shelf in it and there are holes on the floor of the shelf in which the women beat and bruise the olives with a stone pounder. When crushed, the pulp is placed in hot water and the oil skimmed from the top when it rises, and this oil is thought to be very pure and peculiarly suitable for offerings to holy places to be burnt in the lamps hung there.”