Hans Jac. Amman, who visited the catacombs of Sakara in 1613, found the bandages so strong, that he was obliged to cut them with scissors[497]. Professor Greaves[498] and Lord Sandwich found them as firm as if they were just taken from the loom. Abdollatiph, who visited Egypt A. D. 1200, mentions that the Arabs employed the mummy cloth to make garments[499]. Much more recently the same practice has been attested as coming under his observation by Seetzen[500]. Caillaud discovered in the mummy, which he opened, several napkins in such a state of preservation, that he took a fancy to use one. He had it washed eight times without any perceptible injury. “With a sort of veneration,” says he, “I unfolded every day this venerable linen, which had been woven more than 1700 years.” (Voyage à Meroe et au Fleuve Blanc.)
[497] Blumenbach’s Beiträge, Th. 2. p. 74.
[498] Pyramidographia.
[499] P. 221 of the German translation; p. 198 of Silvestre de Lacy’s. See App. A.
[500] See his letter to Von Hammer in the Fundgruben des Orients, 1 St. p. 72. as quoted by Blumenbach, l. c.
IX. According to Josephus the Jewish priests wore drawers of spun flax, and over the drawers a shirt. He calls a garment made of Βύσσος a linen garment. It had flowers woven into it, which were of three different substances[501]. He soon after mentions the same materials as used for making the curtains of the tabernacle. In all these instances the figures or ornaments were of splendid colors upon a ground of white linen. We have no reason to believe, that either the Egyptians or the Israelites in the time of Moses knew anything of cotton: so that, if Josephus gives a true account, Βύσσος must have denoted a kind of flax.
[501] Ant. Jud. iii. 7. 1, 2. p. 112. ed. Hudson.
The shirt of the High Priest of the Jews was probably like that worn in the worship of Isis, which was of Byssus, but adorned with flowers, “Byssina, sed floridè depicta.” Apuleius, Met. l. xi.
X. Jerome on Ezekiel xxvii. says, “Byssus grows principally in Egypt” (Byssus in Ægypto quàm maximè nascitur). Of the celebrity of the Egyptian flax we have the most abundant proofs; but, if by Byssus Jerome meant cotton, he here committed a strange mistake; for, supposing cotton to have grown at all in Egypt, it certainly grew far more abundantly in other countries, and of this fact he could scarcely be ignorant.
XI. Martianus Capella plainly distinguishes between that substance and Byssus[502]. He seems to have considered cotton as an Indian, Byssus as an Egyptian product. He certainly supposed, that they were not the same thing.