Not spinning but splicing

As a person with little knowledge of textiles, but learning about them, I had assumed that the pictures such as that shown above, from a Middle Kingdom tomb at Beni Hasan (c.1900BC), showed the person on the right spinning linen from flax fibres. There are quite a few scenes of spinning using spindles in the pharaonic period. In more modern times, in spinning flax, the fibre is separated from the plant and then the strands of fibre spun together to form a "single". In order to strengthen the thread, two singles are then plied together. What is happening here, as in most other pharaonic spinning scenes is the plying of two already created singles. The person on the right holds two threads from two bowls, plying them together to make a stronger thread.

Spinning single threads does not seem to have happened at this date. So how did the ancients make long thin strands prior to plying? It now seems that for most of pharaonic Egypt linen thread was not spun in singles, but fibres joined to make a long thread by splicing.

You can see a demonstration of splicing done by Sally Pointer on nettle here (21 minutes in) , though flax would be spliced in the same way. 

From the same tomb scene, to the left of the plying woman, there appears to be a kneeling woman, whom I assume is splicing.

You can read more about the scenes here.

The Petrie Museum has some linen cloth from Lahun, some of which is spliced.

Now I have wondered if splicing enabled the Egyptians to get finer thread than by spinning singles. 

There is another aspect to this, with splicing the fibre doesn't have to be processed quite so much as it does with spinning singles. The bits of plant which are not fibre can be beaten out after weaving. Was this a job carried out by men? Perhaps the male 'washermen' whom we know from text, by the river were also fulling linen.

Just thoughts. Comments welcome.

The first picture is from a facsimile by Norman de Garis Davis in 1931. The second is a copy of the same, but enhanced to make it clearer (from Rooijakkers 2005).

Rooijakkers, T. 2005., "Unravelling Beni Hassan: Textile Production in the Beni Hasan Tomb Paintings" 

Archaeological Textiles Newsletter 41 (Autumn 2005), 2-32.