LINEN
440
LINEN
2. BPts (V12, from a root signifying u-hifeness) occurs in 1 Chron. iv, 21 ; xv, 27 ; 2 Chron. ii, 14 ; iii, 14 ; v, 12 ; Ksth. i, 6 ; viii, 15 ; Ezek. xxvii, 16, in all which passages the A.Y. renders it " tine linen," except in 2 Chron. v, 12, where it translates " white linen." The word is of Ara- m;van origin, being found in substantially the same form in all the cognate dialects. It is spoken of the finest and most precious stuffs, as worn by kings (1 Chron. XV. 27), by priests (2 Chron. v, 12), and by other persons of high rank or honor (Esth. i, 6, 8, 15). It is used of the Syrian bi/ssits (Ezek. xxvii, 16), which seems there to be distinguished from the Egyptian bi/ssus or TIJ'^. s/tesk (ver. 7). Elsewhere it seems not to differ from this last, and is often put for it in late Hebrew (e. g. 1 Chron. iv, 21; 2 Chron. iii, 14; comp. Exod. xxvi, 31; so the Syr. and Chald. eqidvalents of huts occur in the O. and N. T. for the Heb. d'J and Gr. jSvaaoc). That the Ileb. garments made of this material were white may not only be certainly concluded from the etymology (which that of TIJIIJ confirms), but from the express lan- guage of Rev. xix, 4, where the white and shining rai- ment of the saints is emblematical of their purity. Yet we should not rashly reject the testimony of Pausanias (v, 5), who states that the Hebrew byssus was yellow, for cotton of this color is found as well in Guinea and India (Gossypium 7-elif/iosum) as in Greece at this day (comp. Yossius, (ul. Virff. Geo. ii, 220), although white was doubt- less the prevailing color, as of linen with us. J. E. Faber (in Harmar, Obserr. ii, 382 sq.) suspects that the bufs was a cotton-plant common in Syria, and different from tlie s/iesh or tree-cotton. It has long been disputed whether the cloths of bysstis were of linen or cotton (see Celsius, Hlerobot. ii, 167 sq. ; Forster, De bysso antiquor. London, 177G), and recent microscopic experiments upon the minnm3'-cloths brought to London from Egypt have been claimed as determining the controversy by discov- ering that the threads of these are linen (Wilkinson, Anc. Egypt, iii, 115). But this is not decisive, as there may have existed religious reasons for employing linen for this particular purpose, and the cloths used for ban- daging the bodies are not clearly stated to have been of byxsn.t. On the contrary, the characteristics ascribed to this latter are such as much better agree with the qual- ities of cotton (see Forster, De bysio, ut sup.). " The corresponding Greek word /StcrffOf occurs in Luke xvi, 19, where the rich man is described as being clothed in purple and_^'»e linen, and also in Rev. xviii, 12, 16, and xix, 8, 14, among the merchandise the loss of which would be mourned for by the merchants trading with the mystical Babylon. But it is by many authors still considered uncertain whether this byssus was of flax or cotton ; fur, as RosenmiiUer says, ' The Heb. word sliesfi, which occurs thirty times in the two tirst books of the Pentateuch (see Celsius, ii, 259), is in these places, as well as in I'rov. xxxi, 22, by the Greek Alexandrian translators interpreted byssus, which denotes Egyptian cotton, and also the cotton cloth made from it. In the later writings of the O. T., as. for example, in tlie Chron- icles, the book of Esther, and Ezekiel, buts is commonly used instead of skesh as an expression for cotton cloth.' This, however, seems to be inferred rather than proved, and it is just as likely that improved civilization may have introduced a substance, suck u .otton, which was unknown at the times when .'i/iesh was sjjoken of and employed, in the same manner as we know that in Eu- rope woollen, hempen, linen, and cotton clothes have at one period of society been more extensively worn than at another" (Kitto).
Cotton is the product of a plant apparently cultivated in the earliest ages not only in India, Cyprus, and other well-known localities, but also in Egypt (Pliny, -xix, 2 ; comp. Descript. de VEgypte, xvji, 104 sq.), and even in Syria (Ezek. xxvii, 16) and Palestine (1 Chron. iv, 21 ; Pausan. v, 5, 2; Pococke, luist, ii, 88; Arvicux, i, oOG). Two kinds of cotton are usually distinguished, the />/n«i {Gossypium herbaceum) and the tree (Jjossyp. arboreuni),
although the latest investigations appear to make them essentially one. Tlie former, which in Western Asia is found growing in fields (Olearius, Travels, p. 297 ; Korte, Reis. p. 437), is an annual shrub two or three feet high, but when cultivated (Olivier, Truv. ii, 461) it becomes a bush from three to five feet in height. The stalks are reddish at the bottom, the branches short, furzy, and speckled with black spots; the leaves are dark green, large, five-lobed, and weak. The flowers spring from the junction of the leaves with the stem ; they are bell- shaped, pale yellow, but purplish beneath. They arc succeeded by oval capsules of the size of a hazel-nut, which swell to the size of a walnut, and (in October) burst spontaneously. They contain a little ball of white filaments, which in warm situations attains the size of an apple. Imbedded in this are seven little egg-shaped, woolly seeds, of a brown or black-gray color, which con- tain an oily kernel. The Gossypium arboreuni {i)ir?oov ioio(j>6piov of Theophrastus) was anciently (see Theoph. Plant, iv, 9, p. 144, ed. Schneider), and still is indigenous in Asia (i. c. India), and attains a height of about twelve feet, but differs very little as to the leaves, blossoms, or fruit from the herbaceous cotton. See generally Belon, in Paulus's Samml. i,.214 sq. ; Kurrer, in the Hall. Encykl. viii, 209 sq. , Oken, Lehrb. d. Naturyesch. II, ii, 1262 sq. ; Ainslie, Mater. Ind. p. 282 sq. ; Patter, Erdk. vii, 1058 sq.