COTTON OF THE ANCIENTS. 



267 



It was probably against this delineation of patterns ingrained, 

 that the prohibition of the Mosaic law in Leviticus xix,, 19, 

 and Deuteronomy xxii, 11, were directed. The Israelites 

 were to be withheld from luxury ; that is the point of many 

 of their institutions ; their strength consisted in their simplicity. 

 But, moreover, they were to be preserved from the symbolism 

 of Egypt. The embroidered representations of Egyptian gods 

 were as hateful to Moses as the more permanent images in 

 wood or stone. 



Here, then, we have arrived at the Flax-growing country. 

 From Egypt the Greeks derived the manufacture of linen. 

 But was all the linen which the Egyptians sold made from 

 Flax? More than one author has gone the length of 

 asserting that the linen garments of the Egyptian priesthood, 

 no less than the mummy wrappers, were all cotton. This 

 notion counts among its partisans the well-known names of 

 Forster, of Tremellius, and of Dr. Solander. Rouelle, in the 

 " Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciencies at Paris in 

 1750/' says that "all the mummy cloths without resinous 

 matter, which he had examined, were entirely of cotton; 

 that the rags with which the embalmed birds are furnished 

 forth, to give them a more elegant figure, were, equally with 

 the others, cotton." "Was the Egyptian Flax-cotton after 

 all?" he asks, " or was cotton consecrated by religion for the 

 purposes of embalming?" The inquiries carried on at the 

 British Museum led to the same conclusions as those arrived 

 at by the Frenchman. But the more recent microscopical 

 investigations of Bauer and Thompson have overturned all 

 these speculations. The fibres of linen thread are said by 

 these more recent inquirers to present a cylindrical form, 

 transparent and articulated, or jointed like a cane, while 

 cotton offers the appearance of a flat ribbon, with a hem or 

 border at each edge. It has, indeed, been suggested that the 

 ripeness of the cotton might affect the condition of the fibre, 



