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/23

 of admiration in it is that each of the twists, although of fine texture, contains within it 360 threads, all of them clearly visible. By these trustworthy evidences we clearly see that in those early times, Egypt was not only widely known for its delicately woven byssus, but it supplied all the neighbouring nations with the finest sort of linens.

From written let us now go to material proofs at hand. During late years many mummies have been brought to this country from Egypt, and the narrow bandages with which they were found to have been so admirably, even according to our modern requirements of chirurgical fitness, so artistically swathed, have been unwrapped; and always have they been so fine in their texture as to fully verify the praises of old bestowed upon the beauty of the Egyptian loom-work. Moreover, from those who have taken a nearer and, so to say, a trade-like insight into such an article of manufacture, we learn that, "The finest piece of mummy-cloth, sent to England by Mr. Salt, and now in the British Museum, of linen, appears to be made of yarns of near 100 hanks in the pound, with 140 threads in an inch in the warp and about 64 in the woof." Another piece of linen which the same distinguished traveller obtained at Thebes, has 152 threads in the warp, and 71 in the woof.

Here starts up a curious question. Though, from all antiquity upwards till within some few years back, the unbroken belief had been that such mummy-clothing was undoubtedly made of linen woven out of pure unmixed flax, some writers led, or rather misled, by a few stray words in Herodotus about tree-wool, while speaking of the corslet of Amasis, quoted just now, took at once the expression of that historian to mean wool, and then skipped to the conclusion that all Egyptian textiles wrought a thousand years before were mixed with cotton. When, however, it be borne in mind that even several hundred years after the Greek historian wrote, the common belief existed that, like cotton, silk also was the growth of a tree, as we are told by Virgil:

Quid nemora Æthiopum, molli canentia lana Velleraque ut foliis depectant tenuia Seres?

Soft wool from downy groves the Æthiop weaves, And Seres comb their silken fleece from leaves—

the [Greek: eirioisi apo xulou] of Herodotus may be understood to mean silk, just as well as cotton; nay, the rather so, as it seems very likely that, at the