The silken fleece empurpled for the loom,
Rivall'd the hyacinth in vernal bloom.
Odyssey, iv.
In the hieroglyphics over persons employed with the spindle on the Egyptian monuments, it is remarkable that the word saht, which in Coptic signifies to twist, constantly occurs. The spindles were generally of wood, and in order to increase their impetus in turning, the circular head was occasionally of gypsum, or composition: some, however, were of a light plaited work, made of rushes, or palm leaves, stained of various colors, and furnished with a loop of the same materials, for securing the twine after it was wound[1]. Sir Gardner Wilkinson found one of these spindles at Thebes, with some of the linen thread upon it, and is now in the Berlin Museum.
Theocritus has given us a very striking proof of the pleasure which the women of Miletus took in these employments; for, when he went to visit his friend Nicias, the Milesian physician, to whom he had previously addressed his eleventh and thirteenth Idylls, he carried with him an ivory distaff as a present for Theugenis, his friend's wife. He accompanied his gift with the following verses, which modestly commend the matron's industry and virtue, and, at the same time, throw an interesting light on the domestic economy of the ladies of Miletus:
O Distaff, friend to warp and woof,
Minerva's gift in man's behoof,
Whom careful housewives still retain,
And gather to their households gain;
With me repair, no vulgar prize,
Where the famed towers of Nileus rise[2],
Where Cytherea's swayful power
Is worship'd in the reedy bower.
- ↑ The ordinary distaff does not occur in these subjects, but we may conclude they had it. Homer mentions one of gold, given to Helen by "Alcandra the wife of Polybus," who lived in Egyptian Thebes.—Od. iv. 131.
- ↑ Miletus was called "the towers of Nileus," from its having been founded by
Nileus, the son of the celebrated king Codrus, who devoted himself for the safety
of Athens. Nileus was so indignant at the abolition of royalty on his father's
death, that he migrated to Ionia.
