[B] To avoid indistinctness through over reduction, I have endeavoured to keep all reproductions in this paper as large as possible, and think I have succeeded in not losing any detail in the necessary reduction.
[C] Hay’s drawings are not published but can be seen in the Brit. Mus., Add. MSS. No. 29823, Fol. 32.
[D] Olafsson, to be referred to later on, remarks that while in Ovid’s time the spathe was used for beating-in the weft, in Seneca’s time the weft was beaten in by a toothed instrument. In other words a weaver’s comb—the embryo reed—had been introduced.
II. The Greek Loom.
Fig. 28.—A Bushongo weaver at work. From Torday and Joyce, Notes Ethnographiques, Ann. du Congo, p. 182.
We have now to say a few words about an upright loom which differs very materially from the Egyptian loom already described. Whether the horizontal loom is a later product than the vertical loom, or was evolved from it, or whether both were independent inventions cannot be discussed here, but I may point out that there is an intermediate form between the two. It is doubtful as to whether this is a transition form. It was first brought to my notice by Mr. T. A. Joyce, as in use amongst some negro peoples in Central Africa possessing an old, high and possibly introduced civilisation, and is figured in Messrs. Torday and Joyce’s Notes Ethnographiques ... Bakuba ... et Bushongo (Annales du Congo) pp. 24 and 182. In this loom the warp is stretched between an upper beam and a lower beam at an angle of about 90 degrees, and the weaver sits underneath at his work, [Fig. 28]. It is not at all uncommon to meet with illustrations showing the warp stretched at an incline, and apart from the fact that in many the weavers are posing for illustration, and therefore, are most probably not exactly in their natural positions, the tilted arrangement has this advantage, namely, that the work of beating-in is improved by the fall given to the “sword” which, with less exertion by the weaver, drives the weft home more effectively. In all these cases, however, the weaver sits or stands in front of the loom, but in the case of the Bushongo the loom is tilted to such an extent that the weaver finds it more convenient to sit underneath the warp.