and linen yarn; the king's merchants received the linen yarn at a price." (1 Kings, x. 28.) And the linen of Egypt was highly valued in Palestine, for the seducer, in Proverbs, says, "I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt." (Prov. vii. 16.) The prophet Ezekiel also declares that the export of the textile fabrics was an important branch of Phœnician commerce; for in his enumeration of the articles of traffic in Tyre, he says: "Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail; blue and purple from the isles of Elisha was that which covered thee." (Ezek. xxvii. 7.)
It deserves to be remarked that the prophet here joins Egypt with the isles of Elisha or Elis, that is, the districts of western Greece, and thus confirms the ancient tradition recorded by Herodotus of some Egyptian colonists having settled in that country, which the sceptics of the German school of history have thought proper to deny.[1] Spinning was wholly a female employment; it is rather singular that we find this work frequently performed by a large number collected together, as if the factory system had been established 3000 years ago.
We have, however, many specimens of spinning as a domestic employment. Indeed, attention to the spindle and distaff forms a leading feature in king Lemuel's description of a virtuous woman. "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
- ↑ The sceptical school of history, founded by Niebuhr, in Germany, and extended by his disciples to a sweeping incredulity, far beyond what was contemplated by the founder, has labored hard to prove, that the Greek system of civilization was indigenous, and that the candid confession of Herodotus, attributing to Egyptian colonies the first introduction of the arts of life into Hellas, was an idle tale, or a groundless tradition. But the examination of the monuments has proved that Greek art originated in Egypt; and that the elements of the architectural, sculptural, and pictorial wonders which have rendered Greece and Italy illustrious, were derived from the valley of the Nile.
