Fig. 11.—Tomb of Tehuti-hetep. Date about 1939-1849 B.C. From Professor Percy Newberry’s El Bersheh I. Pl. 26.
Note the woman on the top right hand corner holding a “beater-in.”
A third representation of a horizontal loom is reproduced from the forthcoming volume of the Egypt Exploration Fund by kind permission of Mr. N. de G. Davies, who made the copy. In this, [!-- Figure 11 in original --] [Fig. 7], already referred to, the lower portion is all that has come down to us. The cloth is not shown contracted as in the Beni Hasan representation, the two laze rods are drawn close to each other and here also an attempt appears to have been made to show the over and under lapping warp threads; the laze rods appear each with a hook, the hook on the upper rod turned upwards and the hook (if it be one) on the lower rod turned downwards. It is possible these hooks may be pegs to prevent the shifting of the laze rods. It may be that one of the two rods is a heddle rod the indication being the fine double lines, but this may not be compatible with the hook at the end of the rod. The weaver on the left holds a spool in her hand, evidently a piece of stick with the weft thread wound round it, which she is pushing through with her fingers. The weaver on the right holds a beater-in as shown in the Beni Hasan drawing. The breast beam is held in position by two pegs near the right one of which there is a curved article of indeterminate use.
Fig. 12.—Study of a Bedawin Arab weaving, from a sketch taken in the Forties of last Century, by Frank Goodall, R.A. The original sketch is in Bankfield Museum. The weaver appears to be provided with one heddle and a beater-in.
There is no very clear evidence as to how the finished cloth was “taken up” unless we accept it that the bulging out of the part G2 means that it was wound round the breast beam as is done on hand and power looms of the present day. Some very long pieces of cloth have come down to us and unless they were “taken up” in this way a long stretch of ground would have been necessary. A modified form of this horizontal loom has been met with in recent years among the Bedawin Arabs, as shown in the illustration of a study sketch, [Fig. 12], made by Frank Goodall, R.A., in the forties of last century. The loom was provided with pegs like the old Egyptian loom but it was supplied with a primitive heddle resting on a stone at each side of the warp and it would appear that the weaver, to a certain extent, did not take up the woven cloth by winding it round the breast beam and by that means retaining his position, but, as the weaving progressed and the line of finished cloth got beyond his reach, he crept up to it and so got farther and farther away from the breast beam until in the end he arrived at the warp beam. Similar looms are still used for mat making by the Egyptian fellah.