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Wheels, hourglasses and millstones. Another mill that scholars who question the story of the woman of Thebez may have in mind is the basalt hourglass-shaped mill. Like the wheel mill, the hourglass-shaped mill was a heavy machine with an upper millstone too heavy to throw. But this type of mill did not come into use in the Near East until the Hellenistic period, nearly 1,000 years after the period of the Judges. Thus, the story of the woman of Thebez in Judges 9 likely referred to a wholly different kind of millstone.