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56
PREHISTORIC TIMES

and wool.
Fig. 73.—A woollen cape, one-sixth of the actual size. Found with the preceding.
Pliny attributes the invention of cotton weaving to the reign of Semiramis. In one of the wall paintings at Benihassan on the Nile (about 2100 B.C.), a figure is represented in a spotted dress—apparently woven with a shuttle. On another tomb at Thebes, a personage is represented in a dress with red and blue spots, which, however, may have been darned on. On a wall painting in the Ramesseum (about 1400 B.C.) an Egyptian being is represented in a dress striped with blue and yellow, while his horse carries a cloth striped with blue, yellow, red, and green. Herodotus describes a corselet sent as a present by Amasis to the Greeks as being of linen with "many figures of animals unwrought, and adorned with gold and tree wool."
Fig. 74.—Another woollen cap, one-sixth of the actual size. Found with the preceding.

From 1000 B.C. we have actual specimens of embroidery.

Finally, the mode of sepulture, though other similar cases are on record, is, to say the least, very unusual; in the Age of Iron, indeed, the corpse was generally extended, but in that of Bronze the dead were, with few exceptions, burned, or buried in a contracted