Siloah

the same as Siloam, Neh. iii, 15; Luke xiii, 4; a fountain under the walls of Jerusalem, toward the east, between the city and the brook Kidron, perhaps the same with Enrogel. Near this was a tower, Luke xiii, 4. שריקות SILK, משי. As the word which is rendered “silk” in our version more probably meant cotton, or rather muslin, it is doubtful whether silk is mentioned expressly in the Scripture, unless, perhaps, in Isaiah xix, 9, where we find the Hebrew word שריקות, from שרק, _yellowish_, _tawny_; which is generally the natural colour of raw silk; hence the Latin sericum: or it may be from the Seres, a nation whence the Greeks and Romans first obtained the article silk. Calmet remarks that the ancient Greeks and Romans had but little knowledge of the nature of silk. The Seres communicated their silk to the Persians, from whom it passed to the Greeks, and from them to the Romans. But the Persians and orientals for a long time kept the secret of manufacturing it among themselves. Silk was first brought into Greece after Alexander’s conquest of Persia, and came into Italy during the flourishing times of the Roman empire; but was long so dear in all these parts as to be worth its weight in gold. At length the emperor Justinian, who died in the year 365, by means of two monks, whom he sent into India for that purpose, procured great quantities of silk worms’ eggs to be brought to Constantinople, and from these have sprung all the silk worms and all the silk trade that have been since in Europe, See FLAX.