Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/22

 such. That at length they became acquainted with its usefulness, and learned to prepare and spin it, is certain; and in all likelihood the very name "lin-white thread," which those Celts gave it in its wrought shape, furnished the Greeks with their word [Greek: linon], and the Latins their linum, for linen. The term "flax," which we still keep, from the Anglo-Saxon tongue, for the plant itself and its raw material, and the Celtic "linen," for the same vegetable produce when spun and woven into cloth, are words for things akin in our present language, which, as in many such like instances, show the footprints of those races that, one after another, have trod this land.

To the valley of the Nile must we go if we wish to learn the earliest history of the finest flaxen textiles. Time out of mind were the Egyptians famous as well for the growth of flax, as for the beautiful very fine linen they wove out of it, and which became to them a most profitable, because so widely sought for, article of commerce. Their own word, "byssus," for the plant itself, became among the Greeks, and afterwards among the Latin nations, the term for linens wrought in Egyptian looms. Long before the oldest book in the world was written, the tillers of the ground all over Egypt had been heedful in sowing their flax, and anxious about its harvest. It was one of their staple crops, and hence was it that, in punishment of their hard-hearted Pharaoh, the hail plague which, at the bidding of Moses, showered down from heaven, hurt throughout the land the flax just as it was getting ripe. Though the Jordan grew flax upon its banks, and all over the land that would soon belong to Abraham's children, the women there, like Rahab, carefully dried it when pulled, and stacked it for future hackling upon the roofs of their houses; still, it was from Egypt, as Solomon hints, that the Jews had to draw their fine linen. At a later period, among the woes foretold to Egypt, the prophet Isaiah warns her that they shall be confounded who wrought (there) in combing and weaving fine linen.

How far the reputation of Egyptian workmanship in the craft of the loom had spread abroad is shown us by the way in which, beside sacred, heathenish antiquity has spoken of it. Herodotus says:—"Amasis King of Egypt gave to the Minerva of Lindus, a linen corslet well worthy of inspection," and further on, telling of another corslet which Amasis had sent the Lacedæmonians, observes that it was of linen, and had a vast number of figures of animals inwoven into its fabric, and was likewise embroidered with gold and tree-wool. What is more worthy