is not only curious, but highly interesting. In the early ages, its very existence was quite unknown, and when found out, the knowledge of it stole forth from the far east, and straggled westward very very slowly. For all that lengthened period during which their remarkable civilization lasted, the older Egyptians never once beheld silk: neither they, nor the Israelites, nor any other of the most ancient kingdoms of the earth, knew of it in any shape, either as a simple twist, or as a woven stuff. Not the smallest shred of silk has hitherto been found in the tombs, or amid the ruins of the Pharaonic period.
No where does Holy Writ, old or new, tell anything of silk but in one single place, the Apocalypse, xviii. 12. True it is that, in the English authorized version, we read of “silk” as if spoken of by Ezekiel, xvi. 10, 13; and again, in Proverbs, xxxi. 22; yet there can be no doubt, but that in both these passages, the word silk is wrong through the translators misunderstanding the original Hebrew משי (meschi). Of this word, Parkhurst says: “As a noun, משי, according to our translation (is) silk, but not so rendered in any of the ancient versions. Silk would indeed well enough answer the ideal meaning of the Hebrew word, from its being drawn forth from the bowels of the silk-worm, and that to a degree of fineness, so as to form very slender threads. But I meet with no evidence that the Israelites in very early times (and to these Ezekiel refers) had any knowledge of silk, much less of the manner in which it was formed; משי, therefore, I think, means some kind of fine linen or cotton cloth, so denominated from the fineness with which the threads whereof it consisted were drawn out. The Vulgate, by rendering it in the former passage, ‘subtilibus’ fine, as opposed to coarse, has nearly preserved the true idea of the Hebrew.”[20] Braunius, too, no mean authority, after bestowing a great deal of study on the matter, gives it as his well-weighed judgment that, throughout the whole Hebrew Bible, no mention whatever can be found of silk, which was a material utterly unknown to the children of Israel.[21] Once only is silk spoken of in the New Testament, and then while St. John[22] is reckoning it up along with the gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pearls, and fine linen—byssus—and purple which, with many other costly freights merchants were wont to bring in ships to that mighty city which, in the Apostle’s days, ruled over the kings of the earth.
[20] Hebrew and English Lexicon. London, 1813, p. 415.
[21] De Vestitu Heb. Sac., lib. I. cap. viii. § 8.
[22] Apoc. xviii. 12.
Long after the days of Ezekiel was it that silk, in its raw form only, made up into hanks, first found its way to Egypt, western Asia, and eastern Europe.
To Aristotle do we owe the earliest notice, among the ancients, of the silk-worm, and although his account be incorrect, it has much value, since, along with his description, the celebrated Greek philosopher gives us information about the original importation of raw silk into the western world. Brought from China, through India, till it reached the Indus, the silk came by water across the Arabian Ocean, up the Red Sea, and thence over the Isthmus of Suez, or, perhaps, rather by the overland route, through Persia, to the small but commercial island of Cos (now Koss), lying off the coast of Asia Minor. Pamphile, daughter of Plates, is reported to have first woven it (silk) in Cos.[23] Here, by female hands, were wrought those light thin gauzes which became so fashionable among some high dames, but while so often spoken of by the poets of the Augustan period, were stigmatized by some among them, as well as by the heathen moralists of after ages, as anything but seemly for women’s wear. Thus Tibullus says of this sort of clothing:
Illa gerat vestes tenues, quas fœmina Coa
Texuit, auratas disposuitque vias.[24]
She may thin garments wear, which female Coan hands