260 
depicted by the skilful hand of the artist on those imperishable 
tablets found on the walls of the ancient palaces and temples. 
There are representations of the various implements employed, and 
the people in the act of sowing the seed, pulling the plant, 
carrying water to fill the wooden vats for the purpose of steeping 
the flax, dressing and spinning it into yarn, and weaving the yarn 
into cloth, distinctly pourtrayed with a minuteness of detail, and 
beauty of colouring, said to be truly astonishing. ‘The walls of the 
curious grottoes and sepulchres dug out of the limestone rock are 
covered with paintings as fresh and brilliant as when first executed. 
Ranges of hills for miles in upper Egypt are filled with chambers 
for the dead. 
It is worthy of note, that very little improvement had been 
made in the process of preparing the flax, and spinning it by hand, 
up to the middle of last century. Several spindles have been 
found, one of them with linen thread on it, very similar to those 
which were in use just before spinning by machinery was invented. 
The linen trade in Egypt must have been considerable at a 
very early period. Both the living and the dead were clothed with 
linen. Asan article of clothing in hot Eastern countries especially, 
linen cloth is of all others the cleanest, coolest, and most agree- 
able. It was the ordinary dress of the ancient Egyptians. The 
priests were forbidden to wear vestments of any other material. 
Independently of what was required to be made into articles of 
dress, the numerous wrappers required for enveloping mummies 
both of men and animals, show how large a quantity must have 
been kept ready for the constant home demand. The linen taken 
from one mummy weighed twenty-nine pounds, and measured 
upwards of three hundred yards, being wound up in forty thick- 
nesses of cloth, varying from the finest muslin to the coarsest 
sail-cloth. 
Almost every museum in Europe of any pretensions contains 
one or more of these highly dried human specimens. For many 
centuries the caverns of Egypt have been mines of wealth to the 
Arabs living in the neighbourhood, the bodies being used by them 
as fuel for cooking their victuals, and the wrappers made into 
en. vee, eee 
