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13/12/2017 Ancient Egypt: Flax and linen

Ancient Egypt: Flax - harvest, linen


production: spinning, weaving

Flax
Flax has been used in the Middle East since the fifth millennium BCE. In
Egypt its role was probably more important than in many other cultures, as
Egyptians rarely used wool and cotton was unknown during much of their
ancient history. It was seen as a gift of the Nile, as the Hymn to Hapi has it:
People are clothed with the flax of his fields [4].

During the Old Kingdom an official called Metjen had his career written
down. Being made overseer of all flax was not the least of the many honours
bestowed upon him, a few of them quoted below:

........ becoming local governor of Xois, and inferior field-judge of


Xois. He was appointed [...]-judge, he was made overseer of all flax
Search this site of the king, he was made ruler of the Southern Perked and deputy, he
was made local governor of the people of Dep, palace ruler of Miper
Site map and Persepa, and local governor of the Saite nome .....
J.H.Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt Part I § 172
Feedback
The plant takes about a hundred days to grow from seed to mature plant
with a height of between sixty centimetres and a metre. The flax harvest
preceded the wheat harvest. The flax plants were gathered in whole, when they
were in bloom, as better fibre could be produced from young plants. That the
Egyptians were well aware of this fact is attested to in documents.
Flax fibres are among the longest and strongest of all natural fibres used by
man. They even gain in strength when wet due to a high pectin content which
acts like a glue under moist conditions. They dry quickly and resist decay
better than most other natural fibres.

A number of wall paintings in tombs (Petosiris' for instance, who had been a
high priest of Thoth in Ptolemaic times) show flax being grown as a crop.
Printout
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necessary and print. Caption: I am the grower with two strong arms, a beautiful face, in the fields , consummate at all labours of the
grower, seeing the interest from the field when the agreeable (harvest) has arrived, giving instructions to the
childen of the peasant, making them think of the year's labour ....

The naked little girl following the reaper on the right is a gleaner. According
to the caption: It is yours what is in your two arms to clothe your body. The
two workers just on the left are making torsions with the flax producing a
primitive rope with which to tie the flax bales.
Old man rippling flax
Source: C.R. Lepsius Denkmäler aus Aegypten und
Aethiopien

Caption:
The old man: 'Even if you bring me 11009 (sheaves), I
shall ripple them all.'
The younger worker: 'Hurry up and stop talking, bald
headed old fieldhand.'

Flowering flax plants Some of the plants were left standing


to ripen, and their seeds were collected
for next years sowing and for the
preparation of linseed oil used in medicines. The coarser fibers of these fully
matured plants were used for making strings and ropes.

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The plants were uprooted, turned upside-down and the earth adhering to the
roots shaken off. Sheaves were formed with the blue flowers showing on
either side of the sheaf.
The men carried the sheaves on their shoulders, children are depicted
carrying them on their heads. With a ripple the seeds were cleared away. The
next step performed by the Egyptian is unknown, but stalks were cooked,
retted in water or left for a while lying on the ground until they were partly
rotted. They were then gathered together, beaten to extract the fibres
(scutching) and finally dressed with a hackle removing last remnants of pith
and other unwanted matter.

Pliny describes how flax was grown in his day and mentions the economic
importance the plant had for the Egyptians apart from the obvious one of
clothing the native population:

Flax is mostly sown in sandy soils, and after a single ploughing only.
There is no plant that grows more rapidly than this; sown in spring,
it is pulled up in summer, and is, for this reason as well, productive
of considerable injury to the soil. There may be some, however, who
would forgive Egypt for growing it, as it is by its aid that she imports
the merchandize of Arabia and India.
........
The flax of Egypt, though the least strong of all as a tissue, is that
from which the greatest profits are derived. There are four varieties
of it, the Tanitic, the Pelusiac, the Butic, and the Tentyritic--so called
from the various districts in which they are respectively grown.
Pliny, Natural History, Book XIX - (eds. John Bostock, H.T. Riley)

Linen
Spinning
The resulting yellowish or greyish
fibres were in the form of flat, 60 to 80
centimetres long strips, each consisting
of 20 to 40 single fibres. These strips
were then divided into strands of the
required thickness. Until the Late Period
many pairs of strips were spliced
together end to end and twisted into rove,
which was then spun into thread [7].
Egyptian spinners often used two
spindles simultaneously, with balls of
flax roves lying on the ground or in low
containers, which served as a sort of
distaff. Sometimes the spinster stood on a foot-stool in order to have the
greatest distance possible between the spindle and the flax.

In the latter part of the first millennium BCE the splice-and-twist technique
was abandoned in favour of draft spinning, where the fibres are drawn from a
loose mass of raw material gathered on a distaff. Petrie described the spinning
process thus:

... the size [of the 12th dynasty spindles] varying from 7 to 15 inches
long. The main differences from spindles of the XVIIIth dynasty is
the greater depth of the whorl, and the long spiral groove for the
thread at the top. These were used like the modern Arab spindles,
most probably; the bunch of raw material after carding is loosely
bound round the distaff, which is carried tucked under the left arm,
the left hand controls the supply of fibre, dragging it out of the loose

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mass ; the fibre as spun into thread is wound on the spindle below
the whorl, and passes up the side of the whorl and through the
groove at the top (a hook in the modern form) which prevents its
unwinding. Then the right hand lays hold of the bottom of the
spindle, and giving it a rapid spin between finger
Model of a workshop for
spinning and weaving
Middle Kingdom
Photo courtesy G. Foley
and thumb it is
dropped, dangling by
the thread from its top.
While it continues
spinning both hands
are actively employed
in dragging out the
fibre (which comes off
the distaff) into an
equable thinness, which as it passes through the right fingers is
immediately twisted into thread by the rotating spindle which hangs
from it. As soon as the spindle has lost its spin, it is picked up by the
right hand and respun, and more fibre is drawn out and supplied to
lengthen the thread. When the spindle reaches too low to the ground
it is taken in the right hand, the thread released from the top groove,
and wound on the shank by tossing the spindle round in the hand;
when wound up close to the loose fibre it is re-caught in the groove
and more spinning is continued.
Kahun, Gurob and Hawara by W.M.Flinders Petrie

Spinning was woman's work, or, among divine beings, a task for a goddess:

Art thou the byssus robe of Osiris, the divine Drowned, woven by the
hand of Isis, spun by the hand of Nephthys?
The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, COL. VI. 12

Weaving
Woven linen has been known in Egypt since 5000 BCE. The oldest
depiction of a loom was found at Badari on a pottery dish dating from the
middle of the 5th millennium BCE while the first known pictures of weavers
were drawn during the Middle Kingdom.
Model of horizontal loom
Middle Kingdom
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The loom was horizontal with a wooden support


for the warp beam and a cloth beam that could be
rotated, to which the ends of the warp threads were
tied and onto which the woven cloth was wound. The
warp yarns were lifted with two little sticks (lease
rods) in order to pull through the weft with the help of a shuttle, which
according to a a depiction was already known in the Old Kingdom. The weft
was beaten in with a bent stick.
Two women generally worked the loom, in early times crouching as the
looms were very low. But sometimes looms were made for three or even four
weavers.
Two women weavers crouching at a horizontal loom
Tomb of Khnumhotep, 12th dynasty, Beni Hassan
Source: Lepsius Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien

When the Egyptians wanted to show things which were behind each other on a horizontal plane, they
drew them above each other. Thus the loom in this picture may look as if it were vertical when in reality
it is horizontal.

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In this Middle Kingdom


depiction the woman on the left is
handling two lease rods, used to
keep the warp lines taut and to
separate odd- from even-numbered
warp lines, a function later taken
over by the heddle. The weaver on
the right may be inserting a weft
thread using a shuttle or she may
be pushing the weft into position with a slashing stick. The finished fabric
close to the breast beam (which is just off the ground in this depiction) is
shown as having a selvedge on the left side preventing fraying [5].
Heddle jack
Middle Kingdom
Source: Petrie Museum website

Contemporary depictions sometimes show


short pieces of wood lying beside the looms,
the like of which have been found at Lahun and are thought to be heddle jacks,
i.e. supports for the heddle rod [9]. True heddles [6] were still unknown, and
lease rods were used to separate the warp threads.
Instead of the warps being being tied to the
beams, or - as has been suggested [7] - being passed
around the warp and breast beams in a loop, the
ends meeting and tied to a rod, warp weights were
apparently occasionally used to keep them in place.
These weights, which might weigh as much as half a
kilo, were made of a variety of materials: dried mud,
pottery and stone.
Middle Kingdom loom weight found at Buhen
Source: Petrie Museum website
Top row: mud and sandstone perforated
Bottom row: sandstone and pottery with a groove

There are no depictions of how the weavers used them. Using vertical
looms, the Greeks more than a millennium later are known to have tied them
to the bottom ends of the warps [5]. But they, unlike the Egyptians, worked
from the top down.

... the men sit at home at the loom; and here, while the rest of the
world works the woof up the warp, the Egyptians work it down...
Herodotus, Euterpe, 35.1

Vertical loom, 18th dynasty


Tomb of Neferhotep, Thebes
Source: after Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, John
Murray, London

The warp threads, which are not shown, are attached


to the warp beam at the top and the breast beam at the
bottom. The weaver is seemingly holding a shuttle rod
or a beater-in in his right hand.

Vertical looms with heavy wooden


frames came into use during the New
Kingdom. A movable pole supported the
warp beam. The lease rods lifting the
warp yarns were worked with the help
of a lever. The weft was beaten in with a
slay, which later was replaced by a
comb [8]. The cloth or breast beam was at the foot of the loom. The weavers sat
in front of it on little stools (see the weavers working on the groundfloor in the
house of Djehutinefer).
Unsurprisingly, the Satire of the Trades - according to the text written by a

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scribe trying to convince his son of the advantages of his profession - gives a
gloomy picture of the weaver's trade:

The weaver inside the weaving house is more wretched than a


woman. His knees are drawn up against his belly. He cannot breathe
the air. If he wastes a single day without weaving, he is beaten with
50 whip lashes. He has to give food to the doorkeeper to allow him
to come out to the daylight.
The Instructions of Dua-Khety

Looms were among the more intricate tools made in the ancient world. They
consisted of many parts which had to fulfill quite a range of different
mechanical requirements, probably one of the reasons for the various kinds of
wood used in their construction. In a Demotic bill of sales from the Roman
period a loom, 3½ cubits wide, is described as follows (unfortunately neither
the loom parts nor all the kinds of timber used have been identified):

... its two warp beams (?) (are of) brV-wood with both its
supports (?) of olive wood, a rm-part of one of the forementioned
warp beams (?) is of Sa (?)-wood, a Vj whose Xaj is of brV-wood....
Berlin P 23779+30009
After the transliteration and German translation on the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae web
site
G. Vittmann ed.: Demotische Textdatenbank, Akademie für Sprache und Literatur Mainz
=> administrative und dokumentarische Texte => Verkaufsurkunden => Webstuhlverkauf

The end product


The linen they produced could be exceedingly delicate. By 3000 BCE the
Egyptian weavers were capable of weaving the finest of cloth with 64 warp
threads and 48 weft threads per centimetre. About 6th dynasty (ca 2100 BCE)
cloth it was said, it was so fine it could be pulled through a signet ring, a
similar claim was made by Pliny concerning first millennium linen [3]. During
the 11th dynasty the width of the cloth measured 160 to 180 cm.

Tiny section of a 5
metre long girdle,
tapering in width
from almost 13
cm to about 5 cm.
More than 100 warp threads per cm.
Ramses III
Source: H.L. Roth [5]
The quality of the cloth of the clothes people wore was often remarked
upon, as it set apart the powerful from the humble:

... You are clothed in the robe of finest linen,


The garments that clad the flesh of the god...
The prayers of Paheri
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. II, p.16

To the wise fine cloth symbolized vanity

Do not covet copper,


Disdain beautiful linen;
What good is one dressed in finery,
If he cheats before the god?
Faience disguised as gold,
Comes day, it turns to lead.
The instruction of Amenemope
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. II, p.157

The cloth was often bleached and sometimes dyed [2]. It was generally sewn
into sacklike kalasiris or wrapped around the hips and worn like a kilt.
List of offerings of linen, 4th dynasty
Source: W.S.Smith, The Coffin of Prince Min-khaf

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Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Volume XIX, 1933

Linen was the fabric of choice for the living, the dead were
also buried in it. The mummifiers, after removing the inner
organs and dehydrating the corpse with the help of salt and
natron, anointed it with oils and finally wrapped it up with
narrow strips of linen. Arms, legs and even fingers were
wrapped separately. This swaddling afforded them the
protection of the goddess Tait.
Linen was also part of the funerary offerings, often
symbolically, when written promises of offerings of

A thousand wnxw-strips, a thousand idmj-linen, four hand-breadths


wide, a thousand Ssr-linen, four hand-breadths wide, (and) a
thousand mAaA(?)-linen, four hand-breadths wide.
W.S.Smith, The Coffin of Prince Min-khaf, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Volume XIX,
1933

were made.

Picture sources:
[ ] Flax harvest scene, after a relief in the tomb of Petosiris: Lefebvre. Gustave ; 1924,
Le Tombeau de Petosiris
[ ] Flax rippler: T.G.H. James Pharaos Volk
[ ] Model of spinning shop: G. Foley [1]
[ ] Model of horizontal loom: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Footnotes:
[2]

The washerman's day is going up, going down. All his limbs are weak, (from)
whitening his neighbors' clothes every day, from washing their linen.
Papyrus Lansing
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. II, p.169

... the god's nobles, the god's friends,


Who lean on their staffs,
Guardians of Upper Egypt,
Clad in red linen
Pyramid Texts, Pepi I, Utterance 440
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. I, p.45

[3]

We have seen some of these toils of a fineness so remarkable as to allow of


being passed through a man's ring, running ropes and all, a single individual
being able to carry an amount of nets sufficient to environ a whole forest--a
thing which we know to have been done not long ago by Julius Lupus, who
died prefect of Egypt. This, however, is nothing very surprising, but it really
is quite wonderful that each of the cords was composed of no less than one
hundred and fifty threads. Those, no doubt, will be astonished at this, who
are not aware that there is preserved in the Temple of Minerva, at Lindus, in
the Isle of Rhodes, the cuirass of a former king of Egypt, Amasis by name,
each thread employed in the texture of which is composed of three hundred
and sixty-five other threads.
Pliny, Natural History, Book XIX - (eds. John Bostock, H.T. Riley)

[4] M.Lichtheim Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol.1, p.207


[6] The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives the following definition

heddle a looped wire or cord with an eye in the centre through which a warp
yarn is passed in a loom before going through the reed.

[8] By Roman times the use of weaving combs was widespread. It was used to beat in
the weft. During the Coptic period it was replaced by
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the reed.

Roman period weaving comb


Source: Petrie Museum website

[9] H.E.Winlock's working model of a Middle Kingdom horizontal loom showing the use of
heddle jacks. The jacks at the Petrie Museum would have raised the heddle to about 10 to 20
cm.

Source: H.E.Winlock Heddle Jacks of Middle Kingdom Looms, Ancient Egypt, 1922

Agriculture
Clothing

Index of Topics
Main Index and Search Page

Offsite links (Opening in a new window)


These are just suggestions for further reading. I do not assume any responsibility for the content or availability
of these sites.

[1] Photographs taken by G. Foley at the Egyptian Museum,

[5] H. Ling Roth, Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms

[7] Textile production and clothing


Ancient economies by M.Silver; halfway down the page he discusses
linen
Linen from the Tarkhan tomb (Petrie Museum)

Feedback: Please report broken links, mistakes - factual or otherwise, etc. to me. Thanks.

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