IN the tomb of Chnem-hotep, at Beni Hasan, there is a wall painting of a horizontal loom with two weavers, women, squatting on either side, and at the right in the background is drawn the figure of the taskmaster. There are also figures represented in the act of spinning, etc. For the present we are concerned with the weaving only.

Fig. 1.—Horizontal Loom, Tomb of Chnem-hotep, from the illustration in Cailliaud’s Recherches, etc. Same size as published.

Of this illustration, there appear to be six reproductions. We have first of all, Fig. 1, that of Fred. Cailliaud (Recherches sur les Arts et MÉtiers, etc., Paris, 1831) with illustrations of drawings made by himself in the years 1819 to 1822. His publication was followed by Fig. 2, that of Sir J. G. Wilkinson (Manners and Customs, etc., London, 1837). Mr. John Murray, whose house has published Wilkinson’s work from the first edition to the last, informs me that a few of the drawings were made by George Scharf, afterwards Sir George Scharf, Keeper of the National Portrait Gallery, but that most of them seem to have been made by Joseph Bonomi, the well known Egyptologist. Wilkinson’s woodcut, although clearly and neatly done, is on a very small scale; nevertheless it admits of a fair comparison with those reproduced on a larger scale.

Fig. 2.—Horizontal Loom, Tomb of Chnem-hotep, from Sir J. G. Wilkinson’s Manners and Customs, London, John Murray, 1878, Vol. I., p. 317. Same size as published.

Fig. 3.—Horizontal Loom, Tomb of Chnem-hotep, from the illustration in Rosellini’s Monumenti (Monumenti Civili), Plate XLI. Reduced one-fifth lineal of size published.

Fig. 4.—Horizontal Loom, Tomb of Chnem-hotep, from Lepsius’ DenkmÄler. Same size as published.

Fig. 5.—Horizontal Loom, Tomb of Chnem-hotep, from Prof. Percy Newberry’s Beni Hasan, I. Plate 29. Same size as published.

After him, Fig. 3, N. F. J. B. Rosellini began the publication of his great work (I Monumenti dell’ Egitto, Pisa, 1832-1844). The similarity between the comparatively few drawings published by Cailliaud and the very large number published by Rosellini is very great. It is of course quite possible Rosellini may have made use of some of Cailliaud’s drawings. Five years after Rosellini’s publication came that of C. R. Lepsius (DenkmÄler, Leipzig, 1849), Fig. 4, his drawings having been made in the years 1842 to 1845. Since the time of Lepsius until quite recent years I can trace no further copying until we get the illustration, Fig. 5, in Prof. Percy Newberry’s Beni Hasan, London, 1910. In this work the reproduction is about one twentieth of the original, or about three fifths of the size of that of Wilkinson, and unfortunately so crude as not to be available for our present purpose.[B] Lastly we have the reproduction, Fig. 6, from Mr. N. de Garis Davies’ drawing made in 1903, and now first published by kind permission of Mr. F. Ll. Griffith.

Fig. 6.—Horizontal Loom, Tomb of Chnem-hotep. Size of original: Height of the figures 9¼" = 24·4 cm. Drawn by Mr. N. de G. Davies, and now published for the first time by permission of Mr. F. Ll. Griffith.

In the various reproductions by the above explorers, the only three which agree very closely are those of Cailliaud, Rosellini and Davies. The others vary considerably and in essentials do not agree with the above nor with one another. The differences may in the first instance be due to difficulties in copying the original in the tomb. Others may be due to ignorance of detail on the part of the secondary copyist—the man who prepared them for publication—so that he was unable to follow up the clues on the drawings laid before him. The differences may also be due to careless copying and to “touching up” of the copies when made; they may be slightly due to deterioration and obliteration of the original in the course of time.

The EncyclopÆdia Biblica gives a variant from all six illustrations, but approaching nearest to that of Cailliaud, Rosellini and Davies. It is misleading in so far that the drawing has been made to suit Professor Kennedy’s idea as to what it should be.

Some of the differences are of minor importance, but a comparison will help materially to our understanding of the method of weaving adopted by the Egyptians from the XIIth to the XIXth Dynasties, or about B.C. 2000 to 1200. To go into details, and taking Mr. N. de G. Davies’ illustration as our basis, we find slight differences in the shape of the pegs B, B1, which are immaterial. A more pronounced difference is seen in the way in which the threads are attached to the warp beam A. Neither Wilkinson nor Lepsius carry these threads over the beam, the former carrying them only as far as the laze threads C, while the latter carries them up to a line drawn parallel to and below the beam; Cailliaud and Rosellini carry them over the beam while Mr. Davies carries them half way only. The object of this half carrying over is not clear. The threads in chain-form at C are probably laze threads, apparently placed there so that in case of any disarrangement of the warp threads the weaver can from that point run her fingers along them and get them disentangled. It has been suggested to me that this chain-form might be a tension chain for taking up slack warp, but the former explanation seems the more likely.

All the drawings but Wilkinson’s show the warp threads converging towards the breast beam; Wilkinson shows them parallel and in Lepsius their convergence is excessive. There should be a slight convergence shown, as in the course of weaving the threads get drawn in, and in later forms of looms in semi-civilised countries we find an endeavour to counteract this tendency by the use of a tool known as a “temple.”

The cross sticks D1, D2, look like laze rods. It may not be out of place here to point out that in primitive weaving laze rods serve two purposes, or one more than in the later somewhat more advanced looms. They serve throughout to keep the warp threads in place, and they serve to separate the odd threads from the even (1, 3, 5, 7 from 2, 4, 6, 8, &c.), and in so doing take the place of the fingers in making the “shed,” i.e., the opening through which the “weft (or woof)” is passed, a function which in turn is usurped by the “heald (or heddle).” The heddle therefore becomes a very important factor, and Dr. H. G. Harrison by no means overstates the case when he says that the development of the heddle is the most important step in the evolution of the loom (Horniman Museum Handbooks, No. 10, pp. 47-49). We may now return to the drawing. Wilkinson shows the rod D1 indistinctly and the left hand end only of D2. Lepsius’ artist seems to have taken a liberty with D1 but in the right direction, by making it more definitely into an early form of heddle—the loop and rod—but he shows D2 the same as Cailliaud and Rosellini. Prof. Kennedy argues that these rods are in the wrong position and that D1 which is a heddle should be in the place of D2. Mr. Davies’ drawing as well as those of Cailliaud and Rosellini show that D1 is a heddle while D2 is shown to be a laze rod. Asiatic primitive looms, like those from Borneo and Bhutan, have two laze rods but no heddle; on the other hand many primitive African looms have one laze rod and one heddle as is the case with this Egyptian loom. More threads are shown on the left hand end of D2 than on the right hand end. Mr. Davies informs me that the same quantity should be shown from end to end across the warp, but on the right hand side they are so indistinct that he was just able to detect but not to trace them and so he omitted them.

We now come to the rod E. Cailliaud and Rosellini show an undulation at the one end a, but do not make the other end clear. Wilkinson shows a small hook at the end a, which appears to me to be a transcriber’s development of the curved end of his two predecessors; in the text Wilkinson says there is a hook at each end of this stick, but he does not show any at the end opposite to a; he refers to these hooks more than once (1st ed., III., p. 126 footnote). Lepsius has altered the shape of the curve and transferred it from the end a to the opposite end. In Mr. de G. Davies’ drawing, it has been inserted in dotted lines, as the original is in such a state that tracing is almost impossible. Wilkinson, Erman, v. Cohausen (Das Spinnen u. Weben bei den Alten, in Ann. Ver. Nassau. Altherthumsk., Wiesbaden, 1879, p. 29), and others call it a shuttle, but I am more inclined to consider it a slashing stick (“sword” or “beater-in”) for pushing the weft into position. A tool which appears to be a beater-in and of similar end shape is seen held in the hand of a woman on a wall painting at El Bersheh—see Fig. 11, top right-hand corner. We have in another illustration, Fig. 7, an article which appears to be a spool, which I think confirms the view that E is not the shuttle but the beater-in. In all the illustrations, too, the pose of the hands of the women bearing on this stick is indicative of a downward pressure and not of a grasp.

Fig. 7.—Tomb of the Vizier Daga. Date about end XI. Dynasty, B.C. 2000. Mr. N. de G. Davies’ Five Theban Tombs, Plate XXXVII.

The upper illustration indicates a woman warping or beaming, probably warping.

In the lower illustration note the left hand figure holding the spool in her hand. At first sight this small black line looks like a continuation of the “beater-in” in the hands of the other weaver, but Mr. Davies informs me that it is quite a distinct article, and that there can be no doubt about it. Just above the breast beam there are 8 or 9 threads of weft but they are too faint to be included.

The selvedge F on the one side of the cloth and not on both sides is also interesting from the fact that selvedges do not appear on the Egyptian cloths until the XVIII. Dynasty circa B.C. 1600.

The breast beam:—It appears to me that the three portions marked G1, G2 and G3 joined up are intended to represent the breast beam and its holding pegs, similar to the warp beam A and its pegs B1, B2, but the portion K is not clearly drawn in any of the reproductions. Wilkinson omits this altogether, but in its place has two black pieces which also are still less clear. Lepsius has omitted G2 altogether and appears to have made G1 and K and G3 into treadles, by raising G1 above the level of G3, and to support the view that these are treadles, he makes use of the overseer’s foot by placing it on the supposed treadle, and the casual observer thinks it is the foot of the woman weaver. However, Mr. Davies’ copy seems to offer a solution. He agrees with Cailliaud and Rosellini in so far as G1, G2 and G3 are concerned. With him K takes quite a different form, in fact it looks very similar to an article which an attendant woman in another panel has close by her, see Fig. 8. It might perhaps be a rest to prevent the beater-in being driven home too forcibly—this, however, is still only a surmise—as the length of the beater-in makes it heavy at the far end.

Fig. 8.—Weaver with the support K, Fig. 6; the woman appears to hold a beater-in in the right hand and a ball of thread in the left hand. Rosellini.

In Cailliaud the warp threads are coloured in pale blue and red on top of the black lines of the drawing; he has painted the selvedge and finished cloth a pale blue, as well as that portion of G2 which is covered by the cloth indicating that this is the breast beam, G3 and G1 are painted a dark red. Rosellini colours A, B1, B2, D1, D2, G3 orange; G1 and K dark red, but E from end to end light ochre. This shows that K is distinct from E.

Fig. 9.

Upright or Vertical Looms from the Tomb of Thot-nefer at Thebes, XVIII. Dynasty, circa B.C. 1425. From a drawing by Mr. N. de G. Davies. Size of original: Height from Base Line to top of frame at A, 11½"=29 cm.

In consequence of this loom being represented as upright it is often spoken of as an upright or vertical loom. But it is drawn upright because the Egyptian artist did not understand perspective, and it was only by making the loom upright that he was enabled to show the details we have just been examining. For the same reason mat making is illustrated edgeways. If the loom were an upright one the two women weavers would have had their backs turned towards the onlooker as can be seen in Fig. 9. Any doubt on the matter has however been set aside by Prof. John Garstang’s extremely interesting discovery of a wooden model depicting a group of women spinning and weaving which he illustrates in his work, The Burial Customs of Ancient Egypt, London, 1907. After referring to the woman spinning, he continues: “The other seated figures apparently represent women at work upon a horizontal loom; the frame and the woof [sic, should be warp] threads are faintly represented upon the board. It is possible that they are making mats or, perhaps, weaving (p. 132).” He gives an illustration of the group taken from a photograph, but as it does not show the lines which indicate the loom lying horizontally on the ground nor the warp threads, I have asked him to let me have a drawing made of it and, with his kind permission, it is now reproduced here, Fig. 10. The threads of the warp and the finished piece of cloth at the breast beam end are clearly indicated. The whole model supports conclusively the well founded supposition that the loom we have been considering is a horizontal one. Curiously enough, Prof. Garstang does not appear to appreciate the important bearing of his discovery, for on a later page (p. 134) in speaking of Lepsius’ illustration, discussed above, he says: “the weavers are seen at work at an upright loom.”

Fig. 10.—Horizontal Loom. Outline sketch by Miss Davey of the original model of a group of one woman spinning and two women weaving, found by Dr. John Garstang at Beni Hasan. The model is in the Museum of the Liverpool Institute of ArchÆology.

It must not be thought that the Beni Hasan representation is the only one which illustrates a horizontal loom. A second one is reproduced by Prof. Percy Newberry from the tomb of Tehuti-hetep circa 1938-1849 B.C., see Fig. 11. In the upper portion the women are seen spinning and preparing the thread generally, while in the lower portion two women on the left are warping, and in the centre three apparently are “beaming,” i.e. putting the warp on to the beams preparatory to commencing to weave, the warp threads being apparently drawn over pegs to ensure the proper tension. This illustration shows the warp flat against the wall like the mat making shown at Beni Hasan.

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, 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.

VERTICAL LOOMS.

Fig. 13.—Upright or vertical loom. Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians, London, John Murray. 1st ed., Vol. III., p. 135.

Apart from the horizontal loom Wilkinson and Robert Hay[C] also recorded the existence of an illustration of an upright loom, said in error to be at Eileithyias (El Kab). Wilkinson’s copy, Fig. 13, is more elaborate than that of Hay. Mr. Davies informs me that the original is not at Eileithyias, but in the tomb of Nefer-hotep at Thebes. Wilkinson in regard to this illustration quotes the oft-repeated statement of Herodotus (circa 460-455 B.C.) in reference to looms in general:—“Other nations make cloth by pushing the woof upwards, the Egyptians on the contrary, press it down.” On this statement Wilkinson remarks: “This is confirmed by the paintings which represent the process of making cloth; but at Thebes, a man who is engaged in making a piece of cloth with a coloured border or selvedge, appears to push the woof upwards, the cloth being fixed above him, to the upper part of the frame” [Fig. 13]. But I am unable to follow Wilkinson in this, for I can find no indication in his illustration which shows how the beating-in of the weft is accomplished. From the illustration all one can say is that it might have been done either way. Wilkinson’s illustration is lettered from a to p but this lettering is not explained by him at all, excepting in the case of the letter k, of which he says: “k is a shuttle, not thrown, but put in with the hand. It had a hook at the end ...” and he proceeds to refer to the drawing elsewhere of the horizontal loom. He does not show the hooks in his illustration. In Fig. 14, I give the sketch made by Mr. N. de G. Davies of the remains of the original from which Wilkinson made his illustration.

Fig. 14.—Drawing by Mr. N. de G. Davies, Jan. 1913, of an Upright Loom in Tomb 49 at Thebes, belonging to Nefer-hotep, at end of XVIII. Dynasty, B.C. 1330. Drawn when in a better state by Wilkinson, Fig. 13, and Hay.

A more satisfactory drawing of upright looms is that which Mr. N. de G. Davies has placed at my disposal for reproduction here. I append his description, Fig. 9. “The picture of men working at two looms is taken from the tomb of Thot-nefer at Thebes, who was a royal scribe in the middle of the 18th Dynasty, circa 1425 B.C. In his tomb his house is shown. He himself sits in the hall, while inside some servants spin and weave, make bread, store the grain, etc. The roof of the chambers is supported on pillars, and between two of these the looms are set up which are here depicted. They are not attached however, either to the roof or the pillars. Faint sketching lines are mixed up with the darker reds in which the picture was re-drawn, and the whole very simply and carelessly executed. I have found it difficult to make it clear. In my sketch the first faint sketching outlines appear as lines. The more solid red lines which replaced these I have ‘hatched,’ and certain portions including the men’s flesh colour, the stools, the discs I have put in solid black, partly because they are for the most part more solid and dark red in the original, and partly to distinguish the portions more clearly from one another. The horizontal lines which cross the web are very faintly drawn and almost as good as obliterated by the white paint which had been put on the web. I have put them in just to show that the bars were conceived of as passing behind or under the web and concealed by it.

“The larger loom is worked by two men, the smaller by one man only. The looms consist of an oblong frame A set up on two stones B. The warp is attached to the warp beam C on top and the breast beam D at the bottom. The threads of the warp are not shown, no difference being made between any woven part and the warp threads; to all is given one smear of white paint. Two discs E are seen hanging against the frame posts, one on each side, the earlier sketch showing a larger disc than the final drawing in dark red.

“Two slender laze rods F are shown on the large loom and heavy bars G, H, lower down; a somewhat similar laze rod and beams are also shown on the smaller loom.

“The weavers sit on benches with their backs to the spectator. The artist has not dared to draw a back view of their heads, but has turned each man’s head to the right to show a profile. They are holding a heavy looking rod which looks like a ‘beater-in.’ One would expect to see a shuttle but perhaps this was too small an object for so rough a picture—perhaps the man at the smaller loom holds an exaggerated shuttle L in his right hand.

“The lines M seen alongside the framework are the faint red sketch lines not cords. The diagonal line N on the left I do not understand, it does not seem an accidental one.

“On the left hand of the two looms the original shows a man spinning coarse thread into finer(?) using two spindles at once; the threads pass through rings fixed in the ceiling as in a picture at Beni Hasan. Behind him two girls are breaking up the flax and two others are making coarse threads of the fibres, almost exactly like those in the tomb of Daga (No. 103) a couple of hundred yards away.” To this description of Mr. Davies I would like to add a word about the discs E. Wilkinson indicates these as rings apparently joining the horizontal beam to the post of the frame, the form of the ring being arrived at as explained by Mr. Davies by the original outline of the sketch having been made larger than the final drawing of the circle, or disc, and not obliterated. In Mr. Davies’ drawing these discs hang on or are fixed on to the uprights only, and I am inclined to think they represent balls of weft thread hanging up in the same way as we see whole rows of coloured balls hanging on the looms of Persian rugmakers, and as can be seen on an Indian rug loom in Bankfield Museum.

It is also very clear that these Egyptian vertical looms are very different from the Greek looms in so far as we know anything about them. The Greek looms had an upper beam only and the warp threads were bunched at the lower end and weighted with metal or clay balls to keep them taut, Fig. 15. The individual warp threads were not weighted; they were bunched and then weighted. The pyramidal shaped clay warp weights found in Egypt are I understand considered by Egyptologists to belong to the Roman period, but in the Manchester University Museum there is a mud article which Miss M. A. Murray describes as a warp weight, Fig. 17, so that it is possible vertical looms with warp weights may yet be forthcoming as an Egyptian and not a foreign industrial tool. But Dr. H. R. Hall informs me this weight was probably found in the ruins of houses where Ægean pottery was found and hence it is probably a temporary warp weight of those people and not an Egyptian article.

Fig. 15.—Greek loom with spool and warp weights. Illustration on a skyphos (van Branteghem vase in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). From H. B. Walters’ paper on Odysseus & Kirke on a Boeotian vase, Jour. Hellenic Studies, 1892-3 XIII. p. 81.

Since writing the above Mr. N. de G. Davies has very kindly sent me on a new set of illustrations, Fig. 16, of which he says; “My attention was called to the scene by Dr. Alan Gardiner. The scenes which represent the preparation of the flax and the stretching of the warp are almost replicas of those in the tomb of Daga of the Middle Kingdom, so far as we can judge, while the pictures of the looms resemble closely those in the tombs of Thot-nefer and Nefer-hotep. The work is done by both men and women. Men prepare the flax while women stretch the warp. Men mostly work the loom, either singly or with a companion. But in one case a woman is seen at work at one of the upright looms. She is shewn sitting sideways on the low bench and is not pictured in a back view with widely spread legs like the men. Unfortunately the work is so slovenly and so much injured that few exact outlines can be secured, and hence all detail is insecure. There are also superfluous lines in red colour which confuse the picture. The tomb is Ramesside in date (circa 1200 B.C.) The inscription over the seated man is too broken to be read.”

Fig. 16A.—Weavers at work as represented in the Tomb of Nefer-ronpet, Superintendent of Weavers at Thebes. Date about 1200 B.C. From a drawing by Mr. N. de G. Davies.

Fig. 16B.—Weavers at work as represented in the Tomb of Nefer-ronpet, Superintendent of Weavers at Thebes. Date about 1200 B.C. From a drawing by Mr. N. de G. Davies.

The drawings appear to confirm generally what we have gathered from Mr. Davies’ previous illustration, Fig. 9.

PORTIONS OF LOOMS WHICH HAVE COME DOWN TO US.

In so far as I know, not many loom parts have yet been discovered, and those which I have had an opportunity of studying do not assist us to much knowledge beyond that which we have gained by a study of the wall paintings. We have the article from Kahun already mentioned, which may possibly be a warp weight, as it somewhat resembles the later warp weights found elsewhere. It is of hardened mud with a perforation at the thin end through which a piece of string has been passed and knotted (Fig. 17), but so far no illustration of a loom with weights has been found, either for the period to which this article belongs or to any other period. On the other hand the material is not suitable for a net-sinker, nor is it intended to be made to stand up. As mentioned above it is probably Ægean.

Fig. 17.—Piece of perforated hardened mud. Possibly a warp weight, 10 cm. × 8·7 × 4·2 (315/16 in. × 27/16 in. × 15/8 in.) Weight 470 gramms (1 lb. ½ oz.) Probably of Ægean origin. Kahun. Manchester Museum.

Fig. 18.—Burnt-clay warp weight. Height 11·4 cm. (4¼ in.) Weight 260 gramms (9¼ oz.) Probably Roman. Bankfield Museum. (Received from Prof. Flinders Petrie).

Another form of warp weight, of burnt clay, is somewhat frequently met with, Fig. 18, but it is described as appertaining to Roman times, and may therefore be either a Greek or Roman article. Similar weights from Cyprus and North Africa, &c., can be seen in the British Museum. Wooden pegs have been found at Gurob, which may possibly have been used for holding the warp and breast beams in position, Fig. 19. These pegs may appear to be rather short for the purpose, but in very primitive looms the warp is not kept so taut as might and should be, and hence there is not the same heavy strain on the pegs as we should deem necessary. The way to settle their use would be to fix them in solid ground and test them.

Fig. 19.—Wooden Peg, possibly used for holding the warp and breast beams. Length 13·5 to 10·2 cm. (513/16 in. to 4 in.) Gurob XVIII.-XIX. Dyn. (about 1580-1205 B.C.) Manchester Museum.

Fig. 20.—Long straight lath with notches at each end, probably a laze rod. Length 1 m. 24 (4 ft. 13/16 in.) Breadth 5·2 cm. (2 in.) Thickness 2·2 cm. (7/8 in.) Kahun. Manchester Museum.

Fig. 21.—Long curved lath. Probably a “beater-in.” Length 1 m. 20 (3 ft. 11¼ in.) Breadth 6·5 cm. (111/32 in.). Thickness 1 cm. (3/8 in.) Kahun. XII. Dynasty about 2000-1788 B.C. Manchester Museum.

At Kahun a long straight lath, Fig. 20, was found which is probably a laze rod, the notches being apparently for a nooze to slip into and so prevent the rod working towards the weaver which it has a tendency to do.

Another long but curved lath, Fig. 21, also found at Kahun is probably a beater-in.

Most large Egyptian collections contain one or more specimens of wooden combs, which are generally called weavers combs, and ascribed to Roman times. But one at least, Fig. 22, has been found with XVIIIth to XIXth Dynasty articles at Gurob, that is belonging to the period 1580-1150 B.C., which is long before Rome existed. None of these so-called combs, for they are really embryo reeds, are shown on the wall illustrations so that they no doubt belong to a later date than that of the XIIth Dynasty. If, as I take it, these “combs” are the forerunners of the reed and were used to drive the weft threads home, and if also the Romans had upright looms provided with warp weights instead of the breast beam, then I think the “comb” may not be Roman but may be a late Egyptian invention. For, on trying to use such a comb on a replica of a Scandinavian upright loom provided with warp weights (instead of with the breast beam) I can get no good result, in fact rather the opposite, but tried on a primitive horizontal loom provided with a breast beam the comb is found to be of some assistance, especially if the warp is not very taut as is generally the case with primitive looms. At Bankfield we have an Indian rug loom, already referred to, with warp and breast beam on which a somewhat similar instrument, but of iron, was used.[D]

Fig. 22.—Weaver’s Comb—a Beater-in. 19·5 cm. × 9·8 × 4·2 (7¾ in. × 37/8 in. × 15/8 in.) Gurob. Manchester Museum.

Fig. 23.—Possibly a warp spacer, somewhat similar in object to the raddle of modern hand loom weaving. Height 2·8 cm. Width 2·5 cm. (11/8 in. × 1 in.) The slots are 6 mm. (¼ in.) apart, 3 mm. (1/16 in.) wide, and about 10 mm. (3/8 in.) deep. From Gurob but probably Roman. Bankfield Museum. (Received from Prof. Flinders Petrie).

An article which Prof. Flinders Petrie describes as a “warp spacer” is shown in Fig. 23. From fragments in the Egyptian Collection, University College, London, it would appear to have been originally more than a meter (three feet) long. It may have been used as a sort of a “raddle,” a tool used for assisting to keep the warp threads in position when being beamed, i.e. put on to the loom. At Bankfield we have an old local hand loom the warp beam of which is provided with a series of holes in which pegs were once inserted to keep the coloured warp threads in position.

Fig. 24.