2 THE COTTON PLANT IN EGYPT 



Stone," which solved the riddle of the hieroglyphs, bears 

 a reference to cotton. 



These and similar data, however, do not enable us to 

 trace the existence of cotton in the Nile Valley beyond 

 an earlier date than about B.C. 200, and such antiquity is 

 trivial in Egypt. There are, however, several wild cottons 

 in the Sudan, some of which were recorded by explorers 

 in the early nineteenth century ; whether they are truly 

 indigenous, in view of the .extensive movements of Arab 

 traders all over Africa, may well be doubted, but their 

 existence leads one to think that some lucky excavation, 

 or perhaps a casual glance through a microscope, will 

 suddenly extend the known history of cotton in Egypt by 

 two or three thousand years. 



The geographical position of Egypt, on the overland 

 commercial route to the East, makes the recognition of 

 indigenous cotton a difficult matter for mediaeval times. 

 Later, at the end of the sixteenth century, we have 

 records by Arabic writers which describe the cultural 

 operations pursued in Egypt itself, and mention the 

 principal localities in which weaving was practised. At 

 the same epoch we have the first botanical record of an 

 Egyptian cotton plant, by Prosper Alpino and by Vesling. 

 Although the plant they figure was merely an ornamental 

 garden shrub, and apparently distinct from the cultivated 

 one, the record is not without interest, as it seems to 

 describe the same Peruvian-type tree cotton which was 

 taken from a garden and extended into a field crop by 

 Jumel, some two centuries later, and from which the 

 present stock has developed. 



When Napoleon Buonaparte eflfected his famous invasion 

 of the country at the end of the eighteenth century, he 

 brought in his train a peaceful force of savants, whose 

 labours are fully recorded in the unique " Description de 

 I'Egypte." From this we obtain much detailed informa- 

 tion, with the added advantage that the herbaria then 



