Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/410

 linen only, dyed blue with indigo; but those of better fortune have a black cloak over their linen shirt."

The coarse linen of the Ancient Egyptians was called. It was made of thick flax, and was used for towels (, Julius Pollux, vii. c. 16.), and for sails (, Lycophron, v. 26.). may be translated canvass, or sail-cloth.

Fine linen, on the other hand, was called. This term, as well as the preceding, was in all probability an Egyptian word, adopted by the Greeks to denote the commodity, to which the Egyptians themselves applied it. It seems to correspond, as Salmasius, Celsius , Forster , and Jablonski have observed, to the "Fine linen of Egypt," in Proverbs vii. 16. For, put into Greek letters and with Greek terminations, becomes and. Hesychius states, no doubt correctly, that was applied by the Greeks to any fine and thin cloth, though not of linen. But this was in later times and by a general and secondary application of the term.

It appears also that in later times was not restricted to fine linen. It is used for a sail by Achilles Tatius in describing a storm (l. iii.), and by the Scholiast on Homer, Il..

Agreeably to the preceding remarks, the mentioned in the two passages of the Iliad may be supposed to have been procured from Egypt. Helen, when she goes to meet the senators of Ilium at the Scæan Gate, wraps herself in a white sheet of fine linen (Il. . 141.). The women, dancing on the shield of Achilles (Il. . 595.), wear thin sheets. These thin sheets must be supposed to have been worn as shawls, or girt about the bodies of the dancers. Helen would wear hers so as to veil her whole person agreeably to the representation of the