Weaving

She reaches for wool and flax, and keeps her hands busy.

Proverbs 31:13

Spherical clay loom weights found in an eighth-century B.C.E. house at Beth Shean. (Courtesy of A. Mazar)

Weaving was women's work. Most of the cloth woven in a hill-country household would have been made from sheep's wool, though the more resilient goat hair was particularly suitable for materials that needed to be durable, like tenting, sackcloth and rope.

The raw wool was first spun into yarn. Yarn was made by drawing wool fibers out from a mass of wool and spinning them together on a hand-held spindle. The spindle was weighted with a small stone or ceramic weight called a spindle whorl. Spinning could be done almost anywhere and at almost any time.

On the bench beside the ground-floor hearth two balls of previously spun yarn are being twisted together, or plied, for added strength, using a spindle with a spindle whorl. The two strands of yarn have been threaded through the loops of a spinning bowl to keep them from getting tangled.

After being spun, the yarn might be dyed. Attractive and distinctive patterns could be woven from yarns dyed different colors.

Loom, (Israelite House, 2nd floor, Semitic Museum: Houses of Ancient Israel Exhibit)

The loom on the upper floor of the house was used to weave wool into cloth. The vertical yarns - the warp - are suspended from the cloth beam at the top of the loom and are held taut by the clay loom weights to which they are fastened in groups of ten to twelve strands. The weaver threads the horizontal yarns - the weft or woof - over and under the warp yarns to form patterns in the weave.

Pieces of cloth from the loom were stitched together using metal or bone needles to make clothing or other large items.

Linen is made from the fibers of the flax plant. Flax was not grown in the hill country, but in marshy or irrigated lowland areas. Because it was expensive, linen was regularly worn only by the rich and by priests, though others might wear it on special occasions. The beige and blue linen piece laid out on the house's upper floor could have been bought in a lowland town like Jericho and was perhaps a wedding garment.

Dyes were produced from a variety of plant, mineral and animal sources. Madder, a root, and pomegranate rind yielded red. Saffron and safflower were used to make yellow. Green came from copper ore and also from lichen. Black was made from hematite.

Murex mollusks, found along the Phoenician coast, produced a range of colors from red-purple to blue-purple to blue. These were the most expensive colors in the ancient world. Murex-dyed fabrics were used in the Jerusalem Temple and were worn only by elite members of society, including royalty and the priesthood.