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| [Illustration:  Bronze needles and pins from ruins of ancient      |
| Canaanite city]                                                   |
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| [Illustration:  Canaanite Nursery bottles (clay)]                  |
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| [Illustration:  Canaanite silver ladle]                            |
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| [Illustration:  Canaanite forks]                                   |
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| Cuts on this page used by permission of the Palestine Exploration |
| Fund.                                                             |
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CLOTHING

Another occupation at which the women worked all day long was the making of clothing for their families.  Most of their garments were made of the wool from their own flocks.  First the wool had to be spun into yarn.  They did not even have spinning wheels in those days, so a spinner took a handful of wool on the end of a stick called a distaff, which she held in her left hand.  With her right hand she hooked into the wool a spindle.  This was a round, pointed piece of wood about ten inches long with a hook at the pointed end, and with a small piece of stone fastened to the other to give momentum in the spinning.  With deft fingers the spinner kept this spindle whirling and at the same time kept working the wool down into the thread of yarn which she was making.  As the thread lengthened she wound it around the spindle, until the wool on the distaff was all gone and she had a great ball of yarn.

=Weaving=.—­The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians were experts in the art of weaving.  They had large looms similar to ours, and wove on them beautiful fabrics of linen and wool.  The shepherds on the plains no doubt bought these fabrics when they could afford them.  But they could not carry these heavy looms around with them from one camp to another, and much of the time their own women had to weave whatever cloth they had.  The primitive loom they used was made by driving two sticks into the ground, and stretching a row of threads between them, and then tediously weaving the cross threads in and out, a thread at a time, until a yard or so of cloth was finished.  Slow work this was, and many a long day passed before enough cloth could be woven to make a coat for a man or even a boy.