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According to scenes decorating the walls of tombs, Ancient Egypt was well known for the
production of linen, from which the majority of ancient Egyptian textiles were made.
Linen is made from flax plants, which take about three months to mature. The plant is a slender
annual with delicate blue flowers. When the flowers have died, the seed heads appear and the
plants are ready to be harvested. Bundles of flax stems were grasped and pulled, rather than cut,
out of the ground. After the plants had dried, the seed heads were removed, either by rippling,
which is removing by hand, or by combing with a long, toothed board, called the rippling comb.
Exposure to water or to dew and sunlight loosened the fibers within the plant stems, in a process
known as "retting." After washing, drying, beating, and combing, the fibers were ready for
spinning.
Flax was not the only textile fiber in use. Textiles have also been found that were made from
sheep's wool, goat hair, palm fibers, grass, and reeds.
Several examples of goat-hair textiles were excavated at the mid-fourteenth century BC
workmen's village at Tell el-Amarna. Goat-hair textiles have also been excavated at other ancient
sites.
Animal fibers did not have the same importance for making cloth because the wool of that time
was not suitable for spinning. The Ancient Egyptians also believed that wool was unclean and
used it only as outer garments that were left outside temples.
Palm fiber is made from the bark of various types of palm trees and was used to make ropes
since ancient times. Palm fiber textiles are not commonly found, but at Tell el-Amarna one piece
of fabric had a series of palm-fiber loops woven into it. Grass and reeds were typically used for
matting. It is possible that they were also used for textiles, although this is not certain.
Once a spindle was set in motion, the spinner pulled or drew out a few fibers at a time from a
mass. As the spindle turned the fibers, twist, or spin, was added. When there was sufficient
twisted thread, the spindle was stopped and the thread was wound onto the spindle shaft. The
most common form of spinning equipment used in Ancient Egypt was the hand spindle. It was
made of a stick, which is called the shaft or spindle, with a weight, called the whorl.
The whorl acted like a flywheel, keeping the momentum of the spin regulated for speed and
uniformity of motion. After the flax fibers were spun into a thread or yarn, they were ready to be
woven into cloth. Weaving is the process of interlacing two or more sets of threads according to a
predefined direction to produce all or part of a textile.
The first task was to remove the thread from the spindle and to warp the loom, which involves
placing the warp threads, or vertical threads, in position on the loom with the threads pulled
tight. Then the actual weaving commences. In Ancient Egypt, the range of weave forms, or
patterns, seems to be limited to the types of weaves called tabby, basket, tapestry, and warppattern. The most common weave from Ancient Egypt is the simple, or balanced, tabby weave,
with an equal number of warp and weft, or horizontal, threads. There are warp-faced tabby
weaves, and weft-faced tabby weaves. A faced tabby weave has more threads in one direction
than the other. Thus a warp-faced tabby has more warp than weft threads per centimeter or inch.
In woven cloth, white areas can sometimes be seen beneath the place where a warp thread, or
vertical thread, passes over a weft or horizontal thread. Bleaching was also a decorative
technique because the wearing of white garments was regarded by Egyptians as an indication of
social status and, perhaps, as a sign of cleanliness.
Coptic Tapestry
The Arabs gave Egyptian tapestry the name "Kapati," based on the name "Copt."
Tapestry is considered one of the oldest decorated fabrics and the first attempt to make
decorations of two or more colors. Tapestry is one of the simplest methods of making
decorated fabrics and was made of linen and wool. The Copts of Egypt were famous for
making tapestry.
Al-Maqrizi, a historian, mentioned in his "Al-Khotat wal Aathar," that Cyrus, the ruler of
Egypt, gave Prophet Mohammad a present of 20 rolls of tapestry and covered the Kaaba with
the same fabric. The Kaaba is the central cubic stone structure within the Great Mosque in
Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which is covered by a cloth.
The world began to demand that type of fabric, which was exported to many Mediterranean
countries. It lost importance in Egypt compared to other methods of creating fabric, but
reappeared in the seventeenth century in France during the time of King Louis the Fourteenth
under a new name, "Gobelin." There was also a similar fabric called "Aubusson", named
after a city in France. The making of tapestry was not limited to Egypt, but spread to most
countries in the Middle East. Persia and Turkey began producing tapestry as early as the
sixteenth century AD, about the same time it was produced in Europe under other names.
The Coptic Church priests wore a Patrashil, which is a vest of white linen decorated with
religious drawings on the chest. It was worn over the priest's robes, which were made mostly
of white linen with stripes of plant decorations. The robes were loose, a reference to the
priest's patience, and long to cover the whole body. It is rare to find silk tapestry from this
period because of the scarcity and high cost of silk. It also was not considered an appropriate
fabric for men.