Historical studies

necks, and 226-229 handles. All the other numbers
on this and the next plate have been described in
the account of the manufacture.
69. Lastly, an interesting matter remains to be
considered, regarding the sources of this school of
glazed ware. The lamps, pi. xiv, are manifestly
Graeco-Roman in origin ; and the usual late Greek
design is seen in the scroll sprays, as on 43, 76-81,
and 170. Some Egyptian influence appears in the
lotus cup, xiii, 56, and lotus bases, 29-32. The
wave borders 2, 35, 162-164 ^^Y he claimed as
Greek, though the pattern is also Egyptian and
Assyrian. But for the most part these designs are
from oriental rather than western sources. The
dragons on the bowl 170 (xiii), on the pieces 171,
179 (xiii), and with the sacred tree on 172 (xviii),
are Persian or Assyrian in origin. The animals on
pieces 63, 68, 89, 98, 116, 117, 122 are all Persian
70. The following investigations were made of the
body-wrappings taken from a small cemetery, about
a mile north of the pyramid of Meydum, in Upper
Egypt, in the year 1910. The period to which they
belong is the late iiird or early ivth dynasty.
So little is known about the details of construction,
or the fibres, of textiles of these early times, that I
have been invited to undertake their examination
and report upon them to Professor Flinders Petrie.
After dividing the examples of cloth submitted
into nine kinds, each has been examined to ascertain,
A, the number of "ends" (warp threads), and of
" picks " (weft threads), per linear inch ; and a micro-
slide of the cloth was mounted to identify it with the
bulk ; B, any peculiarity in the yarns, and to fix,
approximately, the " counts " (the number of hanks
in a pound) ; and, c, the micro-measurements of the
diameter of the fibres composing both the warp and
weft, giving the extreme range and mean of eight
fibres. Each cloth is alphabetically marked in capitals
and a micro-slide was prepared for reference, with
each preparation marked in small letters, thus " A","
" AV " AV etc.
In arriving at the "counts" I was governed by
;
DETAILS OF WEAVING OF EARLY CLOTHS 37
rather than western. The plants on 88, 90, 137
shew the same influence. Whence comes this
Persian influence in the 1st century B.C. ? It is
a long interval since Persia gave the law to Egypt,
some three or four centuries before. Yet we also
find Persian art dominating Coptic design some six
centuries later. Was there a continuity of the Persian
school in Egypt ? Or, were the artists in glazed ware
brought from Persia, to carry on the manufacture,
as that country was the special home of glazed
decoration ? We require to know more of the arts
in the intervening centuries, and more of the glazing
done on other sites, before we can answer these
questions. The collection of glaze and technical
specimens of manufacture has been arranged in
series for the British Museum (glass department),
Manchester, Oxford, Cambridge, Carlsberg, Brussels,
Boston, Philadelphia, and Toronto.
LINEN OF THE IIIrd DYNASTY.
Bj IV. IV. MIDGLEV.
(BOLTON MUSEUM.)
that of similar modern yarns. The " ends " and
" picks " were ascertained from the mounted slides of
cloth, by means of a micro-objective having a " field "
exactly 0-25 of an inch. The diameters of fibres were
measured with an eye-piece micrometer, using an
objective which gives a value of -sTnrij inch to each
division.
71. Cloth A" (largest, light-coloured piece).
i. Mounted a bit of the cloth (about i inch x f
under cover-glass marked " A." With silver-side
reflector found this to be a " regular " woven fabric :
the surface of the yarn has a good quantity of
granular matter deposited upon it. There are in the
warp 48 " ends " per inch, and in the weft 80 " picks "
per inch. The " counts " of the yarns are (approximately)—
in the warps (which to my surprise are
doubled) equivalent to 18^ modern yarns; and in
the weft about 245', the latter varying more in
diameter than does the warp. No attempt made
to count the number of fibres composing a cross-
section, owing to their brittle condition.
ii. A". Prepared a slide shewing four strands of
warp at one end, and four strands of weft at the other.
Examined with S.S. reflector, transmitted light, and
)