[Illustration: 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.
[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 AEgean pottery was found
and hence it is probably a temporary warp weight of those people and
not an Egyptian article.
[Illustration: 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."
[Illustration: 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.]
[Illustration: 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.