Ancient Egyptian Ground Looms

I've been practising some very basic weaving, really basic, I'm a beginner, so been thinking what can be possible on a very simple loom. I know back-strap looms can be used to make some really outstanding pieces, but the ancient Egyptians, for much of their history, used a ground loom on which they wove linen. 

Model of a weaving workshop from the tomb of Mekhetre (c.2000 BC). On the left wall it looks like women are using warp pegs stuck in the wall and centre you can see the ground loom.

Right: A ground loom of the early 20th century.

Four pegs are hammered into the ground, sticks are attached at one short ends and the warp threads strung between the sticks. Alternate warp threads are lifted up and down by means of another stick to which thread heddles are attached and the weft passed between them.

You can get an idea of how such a loom works in this video. 

Such looms appear to have been used from very early on in ancient Egypt. Here is a depiction of an early example on a piece of pottery from the Petrie Museum. It dates to c. 3600 BC.

The loom is the rectangular shape and depicted at the bottom of the vessel. The weaver would have sat at the foot end of the loom (the right in the picture) and the depiction shows that a start had been made to weaving (right in the picture, the end nearest where the weaver would have sat). If you look closely you may see that the bottom right of the loom in the depiction (this would have been bottom left for the weaver) has some strange 'extensions'.

These would have been caused by the weft threads being quite short, so that they would only pass under and over the warp threads for a few widths of the fabric. This would result in a fringed left edge. Such fringes appear to have been left and used as a decorative feature on the final cloth.

Here is the famous Tarkhan dress from the Petrie Museum, c3200BC. On the wearer's left you can see the weft thread showing underneath the arm.

In later periods, the weft was longer but the use of the decorative fringe was still desirable. Often, a separately made fringe piece was deliberately added to the garment to emulate the short weft effect.

From around 1500 BC, vertical looms came into use. The ground loom was still used,though with less frequency. 

It amazes me that the ancients were able to weave such fine weaves on such looms. Some royal linens achieved a count of 60 threads per centimeter though more common counts were 20-50 threads a cm (Kemp and Vogelsang-Eastwood, 2001, pp100-103).

Kemp, B. J. and Vogelsang-Eastwood, G. 2001. The Ancient Textile Industry at Amarna. The Egypt Exploration Society.