n one,
women are filling a distaff with cotton, twisting it with a spindle into
thread, and weaving this on an upright loom. Beside them is a man,
evidently an overseer, watching the weavers and their work. The other
wall-painting represents a man weaving a checkered rug on a horizontal
loom. Other monuments of ancient Egypt and of Mesopotamia bear witness
that the manufacture of rugs dates a considerable time prior to 2400
B.C.

At Thebes a fresco, dating 1700-1000 B.C., represents three men weaving
at an upright loom. A small rug, discovered in that city some time
between the years 666 and 358 B.C., and now in the possession of Mr. Hay
in England, is described by Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson as follows: "This
rug is eleven inches long by nine broad. It is made like many carpets of
the present day, with woollen threads on linen string. In the centre is
the figure of a boy in white, with a goose above it, the hieroglyphic of
'child' upon a green ground, around which is a border composed of red,
white, and blue lines. The remainder is yellow, with four white figures
above and below, and one at each side, with blue outlines and red
ornaments; and the outer border is made up of red, white, and blue
lines, with a fancy device projecting from it, with a triangular summit,
which extends entirely round the edge of the rug. Its date is uncertain,
but from the child, the combination of the colors, and ornamental
border, I am inclined to think it really Egyptian, not of the Pharaonic,
but of the Greek and Roman period." Dr. Samuel Birch, who edited the
last edition of Wilkinson's work, affirms that this is so.

On the marbles of Nineveh is represented the pectoral worn by
Sardanapalus. It is an exact miniature of a Kurdish rug of modern times.
The Tree of Life, the motif of most of the Persian rug designs, is in
the centre, and the border is ornamented with rosettes and bars.

Phoenician art is intermediate between Egyptian and Assyrian. The
color most prized in the art of Phoenicia was the rare and beautiful
purple (properly crimson) dye used exclusively for the garments of
royalty. For centuries the process of making this dye was lost, and even
at the time of its highest fame it was familiar only to the maritime
Canaanites, who procured the color from an animal juice of the murex, a
shellfish. The shellfish and the dye were known to the ancients as
_conchylium_.

When Cleopatra, the famous Queen of Egypt, went to meet Caesar fo