Wool fabric, ancient

Caulking of the ark with pitch is described in Genesis 6.14. Linen fabric, at least 7000 years old has been unearthed near Robenshausen, Switzerland. Wool fabric was used in Mesopotamia as early as 4000 B.C., cotton was woven by the ancient Eg5rptians and Sericulture was practiced in China as early as 2500 B.C. 

The ancient process of stoving is stiU occasionally used to bleach wool and silk with sulfur dioxide. In this process, wet fabrics are hung in chambers of burning sulfur or sulfur dioxide gas for at least 8 h. The fabrics are then washed with sodium sulfite to remove excess sulfur dioxide. Fabric so treated may have unpleasant odors, and the original color eventually returns, but the process is simple and inexpensive. 

It is one thing to discover a coloured substance but its attachment, in a fast or permanent condition, to a fabric is a different and often difficult matter. That the ancient dyers had attained a complete mastery of the art of dyeing with Tyrian Purple is clear from the assertion of Lucretius in De Rerum Jiaiura The purple dye of the shellfish so unites with the body of wool alone, that it cannot in any case be severed, not were you to take pains to undo what is done with Neptune s wave, not if the whole sea were willed to wash it out with all its waters. ... 

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