But, although these passages show, that sheep were bred in Egypt, we think it evident that their number was very limited. Egyptian wool cannot have been of the least importance as an article of commerce. What was produced must also have been consumed in the country. For, although the chief material for the clothing of the Egyptians was linen, and they were forbidden to be buried in woollen or to use it in the temples, yet Herodotus (ii. 81.) states, that on ordinary occasions they wore a garment of white wool over their linen shirt. They also used wool for embroidering. According to Pliny[240] the Egyptian wool was coarse and of a short staple. Tertullian records a saying of the Egyptians, that Mercury invented the spinning of wool in their country[241].
[240] Hist. Nat. l. viii. 73. See [Appendix A].
[241] De Pallio, c. 3.
Strabo in an instructive manner contrasts the Ethiopians with the Egyptians. Having observed, that the boundary between the two nations was the smaller cataract above Syene and Elephantine, he says, that the Ethiopians led for the most part a pastoral life without resources, both on account of their intemperate climate and the poverty of their soil, and also because they were remote from the civilized world; whereas the Egyptians had always lived in a refined manner and under a regular government, settled in fixed habitations, and cultivating philosophy, agriculture, and the arts[242]. Thus do we find the nomad life recurring immediately to the south of Egypt. Strabo further states, that the Ethiopian sheep were small, and instead of being woolly were hairy like goats, on which account the people wore skins instead of woollen cloth[243]. That these sheep were held in some estimation by the Egyptians is, however, manifest from the fact, that in the splendid procession exhibited at Alexandria by Ptolemy Philadelphus, there were 130 sheep from Ethiopia, 300 from Arabia, and 20 from Eubœa [244]. Also, that the pastoral habits of the Ethiopians were known to the Romans may be inferred from the allusion, which Virgil makes to them in his Tenth Eclogue (l. 64-68.):
No toils of ours can change the cruel god,
Though we should flee him through each new abode;
Whether we drink, where chilling Hebrus flows,
And winter reigns amid Sithonian snows;
Or, where the elms beneath hot Cancer bend,
Our Ethiopian sheep we fainting tend.