The discovery by Messrs. Alan Gardiner and N. de G. Davies of illustrations of Egyptian upright looms, confirms Wilkinson in his statement and illustration that the Egyptians had this class of loom as well as the horizontal one. The vertical loom is found in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, and is, probably, ethnically as old if not older than the horizontal loom.[E] But this Egyptian upright loom differs from another, the Greek, or Central European, or Scandinavian form of the upright loom, in having an upper and a lower beam so that the warp is made taut between two beams, while in the Greek loom there is only one beam. The warp hangs from this beam, the warp threads being made taut by means of weights attached at the lower ends.
Fig. 29a.—Illustration on a small lekythos of an Athenian girl at work on a tapestry loom, together with a full size tracing of the tapestry loom. British Museum. B.C. 500.
Fig. 29b.—Illustration of a Greek woman with a tapestry loom. From Stackelberg’s Graeber der Hellenen, pl. xxxiii.
The Greeks were, however, acquainted with the tapestry loom, for there exists in the British Museum a small lekythos with an illustration, [Fig. 29a], of such an article resting on the knees of a lady weaver.[F]
