STRAW — chopped stubble mixed into Nile mud to bind sun-dried bricks, a technique well attested in Egyptian brickmaking (and Egyptian scribes really did record daily brick quotas). Pharaoh's cruelty in Exodus 5 is exact: he does not lower the quota, he withdraws the TEBEN and keeps the number, so the slaves must scatter across Egypt gathering stubble and still deliver as before. 'Bricks without straw' has become the English proverb for an impossible demand. → first discussed at Exod 5:7