268 



DICKSON ON THE LINEN AND 



or that the ancient mode of treating the plant might give to 

 the Egyptian Flax an appearance not presented by European 

 specimens. Yet, although Philostratus expressly affirms that 

 calico was exported from India to Egypt for sacred purposes, 

 the balance of opinion has inclined to the belief that all the 

 cere-cloths at least were of Flax. 



* As our inquiry leads us from the shores of Greece to the 

 banks of the Nile, the language in which the subject of discus- 

 sion is expressed is radically changed. In Egypt we are in 

 contact with a Shemitic dialect. The Teutonic word ' ' linen " 

 disappears. The Greek, in purchasing a foreign commodity, 

 had learnt the word bussos, and he had given it to the Romans 

 as " byssus." But in the Shemitic dialects we meet with 

 half-a-dozen words which may all mean linen or cotton, and 

 whose signification has been abundantly disputed. No doubt 

 these words had originally different significations ; but even- 

 tually they were all confounded together. The account of the 

 corslet presented by Amesis, if there were no other evidence, 

 would prove that the Egyptians had cotton under the Pharaohs. 

 The very phrase for cotton, which we find in the mouths of 

 the Greeks and Eomans — viz., "linen of the tree" or " woollen 

 of the trees/' we find in the book of Joshua, ii., 6. But 

 ' ' byssus " seems to have been selected as the name of the 

 material specially destined for sacred rites. It certainly is 

 the term which Herodotus employs in speaking of the mummy 

 wrappers. But had the father of history another word to use, 

 intelligible at least to Greek ears? On the other hand, if 

 bassos meant linon, why did he choose the foreign word? 

 Byssus evidently had a special adaptation to his subject. That 

 the Jewish byssus had a more yellow tint than the plant cul- 

 tivated in Elis may be ioferred from a passage in Pausanias \ 

 brut the etymology of the word leads us to surmise that the 

 name implied peculiar brilliancy and whiteness. Theocritus, 

 who enjoyed the favours of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and may 



