EGYPTIAN LOOMS,
with the processes of Spinning and Winding.
CHAPTER VI.
SILVER TEXTURES, &c., OF THE ANCIENTS.
EXTREME BEAUTY OF THESE MANUFACTURES.
Magnificent dress worn by Herod Agrippa, mentioned in Acts xii. 21—Josephus’s account of this dress, and dreadful death of Herod—Discovery of ancient Piece-goods—Beautiful manuscript of Theodolphus, Bishop of Orleans, who lived in the ninth century—Extraordinary beauty of Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, and other manufactured goods preserved in this manuscript—Egyptian arts—Wise regulations of the Egyptians in relation to the arts—Late discoveries in Egypt by the Prussian hierologist, Dr. Lepsius—Cloth of glass.
The Evangelist Luke, in Acts xii. 21. speaks of the “royal apparel,” in which Herod Agrippa, king of Judea, was arrayed when he received the ambassadors of Tyre and Sidon, sitting in great state upon his throne at Cæsarea. “And upon a set day, Herod arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them. And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man. And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.”
Josephus describes the same garment, which was a tunic, as “all made of silver, and wonderful in its texture.” He adds, that the king appeared in this dress at break of day in the theatre, and that the silver, illuminated by the first rays of the sun, glittered in such a manner as to terrify the beholders, so that his flatterers began to call out aloud, saluting him as a god. He was then seized with the painful and loathsome distemper, of which he soon after died[124].
[124] Ant. Jud. L. xix. cap. 8. § 2. p. 871. Hudson.
We extract the following curious account of the discovery of Ancient Piece-goods and manufactured stuffs from a late number of an English publication called the “Mining Review.”
Discovery of ancient Piece-goods and manufactured stuffs.—“It is more than a thousand years since Theodolphus, Bishop of Orleans, gave to Notre Dame du Puy en Velay a beautiful manuscript, containing the ancient Testament, the chronography of St. Isidor, and other pieces, the whole distributed into 138 articles; which he presented in token of gratitude for his deliverance from the prison of Angers, where he was confined in the year 835. It was on Palm Sunday that year, while Louis Le Debonnaire was passing, that he began to sing a well-known Canticle, which the Catholic church has since then introduced into its ceremonies. This precious manuscript, in a state of perfect preservation, is to be seen in the archives of the Bishopric of the Puy en Velay, department of the Haute Loire. A portion of the manuscript is written on leaves of common parchment, in letters of red and black, with a few of gold intermixed. The other portion is inscribed on leaves of parchment, dyed purple, with letters of gold and silver, among which are observed, ornaments of different kinds and colors, designated the “Byzantine style.” The manuscript, remarkable for its beauty and preservation, is still more valuable for the manufactured stuffs which it contains. When Theodolphus composed his manuscript, with the intention of preserving from contact and friction the gold and silver characters (which, in time, would have tended to displace and obliterate them), he placed between each page a portion of the manufactured tissues peculiar to the era in which he lived. These specimens of the silk, and other pieces of goods of the time are thus curiously preserved[125]. Till lately, little attention was paid to these tissues, which are principally of India manufacture, bearing scarcely any analogy to the products of the modern loom. Some are CASHMERE SHAWLS of those patterns, which the French call broucha and espouline, and are made in the Indian fashion, but with this difference, that they are limited to four colors, and demonstrate the greatest antiquity by the primitive simplicity of their colors and design. Others are CRAPES and GAUZES, against the luxury of whose transparent tissues, the fathers of the church at that time so perseveringly fulminated their censures. The rest consist of muslins and China-crape of exquisite beauty. The components of the majority of these tissues are of goats’ or camels’ hair of exceeding delicacy and fineness. Like the manufactured stuffs of ancient Egypt, painted on the walls of its palaces and tombs, or substantially preserved amidst the envelopes of mummies, the designs are limited to four colors, which are in fact the four sacred ones of China, India, Egypt, and the Hebrew Tabernacle. Nevertheless, the Egyptian designs, identical with those of India, are many of them of exquisite beauty. The consummate skill of the silk and cotton manufacturers of ancient Egypt, 4000 years ago, the beauty and richness of their fabrics—the little alteration which has taken place in the economy or machinery of the factories, as well as in their product, has been recently demonstrated in the great work of Champollion. All the details of the silk and cotton factories of Egypt, under the Pharaohs of the 18th dynasty (which then monopolized the commerce of the world, and sent a colony of weavers, from the overburthened population of Lower Egypt, to found Athens, and the subsequent civilization of Europe), are laid open with vivid accuracy in that splendid work[126], and brought with all their startling analogies before the eye of the modern reader by drawings from the temples, palaces, and tombs which it contains. It proves, indeed, that there is ”nothing new under the sun.”