The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

SILK BY THE ANCIENTS.
Joseph (1700 years before the Christian era), as it is recorded
that Pharaoh " arrayed him in vestures of fine linen." (Gene-
sis xli. 42.) Two centuries later, the Hebrews carried with
them on their departure from that ancient seat of civilization,
the arts of spinning, dyeing, weaving, and embroidery ; for
when Moses constructed the tabernacle in the wilderness, " the
v/omen that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands, and
brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of pur-
ple, and of scarlet, and of fine hnen." (Exod. xxxv. 2.5.)
They also " spun goats' hair ;" and Bezaleel and Aholiab
"worked all manner of wwk, of the engraver, and of the
cunning workman, and of the cmhroiderer, in hhie, and of
2)urple, and in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver
These passages contain the earliest mention of woven cloth-
ing, which was linen, the national manufacture of Egypt.
The prolific borders of the Nile furnished from the remotest
periods, as at the present time, abundance of the finest flax*
and it appears, from the testimony both of sacred and profane
histor)^, that linen continued to be almost the only kind of
clothing used in Egypt till after the Christian erat. The
Egyptians exported their "hnen yarn," and "fine hnen," to
the kingdom of Israel, in the days of Solomon, (2 Chron. i.
16 ; Prov. vii. 16 ;) their " fine hnen with broidered work," to
Tyre, (Ezek. xxvii. 7.)
The women of Sidon before the Trojan war, were especially
celebrated for the skill in embroidery : and Homer, who lived
900 years B. C, mentions Helen as being engaged in em-
broidering the combats of the Greeks and Trojans.
statutes represented with a distaff, to intimate that she taught men the art of spin-
ning ; and this honor is given by the Egyptians to Isis, by the Mohammedans to
a son of Japhet, by the Chinese to the consort of their emperor Yao, and by the
Peruvians to Mamaoella, wife to Manco-Capac, tlieir first bovereign. These
traditions serve only to carry the mvaUiable arts of spinning and weaving up to
an extremely remote period, long prior to that of authentic history.
* Paintings representing the gathering and preparation of flax have been found
on the walls of the ancient sepulchres at Eleithias and Beni Hassan, in Upper
Egypt, and are described and copied by Hamilton.—" Remarks on several parts
of Turkey, and on ancient and modern Egypt," pp. 97 and 287, plate 23.
t Herodotus, book u. c. 37, 81. (See Plate vi.)
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