Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/411

 lady, whom Paulus Silentiarius addresses in the following line, written evidently with Homer's Helen before his mind:

You conceal your flowing locks with a snow-white sheet.—Brunck, Analecta, vol. iii. p. 81.

Perhaps even the sheets, spread for Phœnix to lie upon in the tent of Achilles, and for Ulysses on his return to Ithica from the country of the Phæacians, though not called by the Egyptian name, should be supposed to have been made in Egypt. In the time of Homer (900 B. C.) the use of linen cloth was certainly rare among the Greeks; the manufacture of it was perhaps as yet unknown to them.

The term [Greek: Sindôn] (Sindon), was used to denote linen cloth still more extensively than [Greek: othonê], inasmuch as it occurs both in Greek and Latin authors. According to Julius Pollux this also was a word of Egyptian origin, and Coptic scholars inform us that it is found in the modern Shento, which has the same signification.

Serapion was called Sindonites, because he always wore linen (Palladii Hist. Lausiaca, p. 172). He was an Egyptian, and retained the custom of his native country.

Although [Greek: Sindôn] originally denoted linen, we find it applied, like [Greek: Othonê], to cotton cloth likewise; and although both of these terms probably denoted at first those linen cloths only, and especially the finer kinds of them, which were made in Egypt, yet as the manufacture of linen extends itself into other countries, and the exports of India were added to those of Egypt, all varieties either of linen or cotton cloth, wherever woven, were designated by the Egyptian names [Greek: Othonê] and [Greek: Sindôn].

Another term, which is probably of Egyptian origin, and therefore requires explanation here, is the term [Greek: Byssos] or Byssus. Vossius (Etymol. L. Lat. v. Byssus) thinks it was, as Pollux and Isidore assert, a fine, white, soft flax, and that the cloth made from it was like the modern cambric: "Similis fuisse videtur lino isti, quod vulgo Cameracense appellamus." Celsius, in his Hierobotanicon {vol. ii. p. 173.), gives the same ex-*. 657. Od. [Greek: n]. 73. 118.]