•Date wine, which was also manufactured in Egypt. It was made by mashing the fruit in water in
certain proportions.
•Various other fruits and vegetables are enumerated by Pliny as supplying materials for factitious
or home-made wine, such as figs, millet, the carob fruit, etc. It is not improbable that the Hebrews
applied raisins to this purpose in the simple manner followed by the Arabians, viz., by putting
them in jars of water and burying them in the ground until fermentation took place.
Dromedary
[Camel]
Drusilla
(watered by the dew), daughter of herod Agrippa *., (Acts 24:24) ff., and Cypros. Born A.D.
- She was at first betrothed to Antiochus Epiphanes, prince of Commagene, but was married to
Azizus, king of Emesa. Soon after, Felix, procurator of Judea, brought about her seduction by means
of the Cyprian sorcerer Simon, and took her as his wife. In (Acts 24:24) we find her in company
with Felix at Caesarea. Felix who, together with his mother, perished in the eruption of Vesuvius
under Titus.
Dulcimer
(Heb. sumphoniah) a musical instrument, mentioned in (Daniel 3:5,15) probably the bagpipe.
The same instrument is still in use amongst peasants in the northwest of Asia and in southern
Europe, where it is known by the similar name sampogna or zampogna.
Dumah
(silence).
•A son of Ishmael, most probably the founder of the Ishmaelite tribe of Arabia, and thence the
name of the principal place of district inhabited by that tribe. (Genesis 25:14; 1 Chronicles 1:30;
Isaiah 21:11)
•A city in the mountainous district of Judah, near Hebron, (Joshua 15:52) represented by the ruins
of a village called ed-Daumeh, six miles southwest of Hebron.
Dung
The uses of dung were two-fold—as manure and as fuel. The manure consisted either of straw
steeped in liquid manure, (Isaiah 25:10) or the sweepings, (Isaiah 5:25) of the streets and roads,
which were carefully removed from about the houses, and collected in heaps outside the walls of
the towns at fixed spots—hence the dung-gate at Jerusalem—and thence removed in due course to
the fields. The difficulty of procuring fuel in Syria, Arabia and Egypt has made dung in all ages
valuable as a substitute. It was probably used for heating ovens and for baking cakes, (Ezra 4:12,15)
the equable heat which it produced adapting it pecularily for the latter operation. Cow’s and camels
dung is still used for a similar purpose by the Bedouins.
Dungeon
[Prison]
Dura
(a circle), the plain where Nebuchadnezzar set up the golden image, (Daniel 3:1) has been
sometimes identified with a tract a little below Tekrit, on the left bank of the Tigris, where the name
Dur is still found. M. Oppert places the plain (or, as he calls it, the “valley”) of Dura to the southeast
of Babylon, in the vicinity of the mound of Dowair or Duair, where was found the pedestal of a
huge statue.
Dust