SHESH (eV), also SHESHI, translated fine linen in the A. V., occurs twenty-eight times in Exodus, once in Genesis, once in Proverbs, and three times in Ezekiel. Considerable doubts have, however, always been entertained respecting the true meaning of the word ; some have thought it signified fine wool, others szlk ; the Arabs have translated it by words referring to colours in the passages of Ezekiel and of Proverbs. Some of the Rabbins state that it is the same word as that which denotes the number six, and that it refers to the number of threads of which the yarn was com posed. Thus Abarbanel on Gen. xxv. says : Schesch est linum ZEgyptiac-am quod est preti osissimum inter species lini. Quum vero tortum est sex filis in unum, vocatur schesch, aut schesch moschsar. Sin ex unico filo tantum, dicitur bad' (Cels. Hierobot. p. 26o). This interpretation, however, has satisfied but few. The Greek Alex andrian translators used the word plicro-or, which by some has been supposed to indicate cotton,' and by others linen' [Bvssus].
In the several passages where we find the word Shesh used, we do not obtain any information re specting the plant ; but it is clear it was spun by women (Exod. xxx. 25), was used as an article of clothing, also for hangings, and even for the sails of ships, as in Ezekiel xxvii. 7. It is evident from these facts that it must have been a plant known as cultivated in Egypt at the earliest period, and which, or its fibre, the Israelites were able to obtain even wnen in the desert. As cotton does not ap pear to have been known at this very early period, we must seek for shesh among the other fibre yielding plants, such as flax and hemp. Both these are suited to the purpose, and were procur able in those countries at the times specified. Lexicogvaphers do not give us much assistance in determining the point, from the little certainty in their inferences. The word shesh, however, ap pears to us to have a very great resemblance, with the exception of the aspirate, to the Arabic name of a plant, which, it is curious, was also one of those earliest cultivated for its fibre, namely hemp.
Of this plant, one of the Arabic names is husheesh, or the herb par excellence, the term being, sometimes applied to the powdered leaves only, with which an intoxicating electuary is prepared. This name has long been known, and is thought by some to have given origin to our word assassin or hassasin. Makrizi treats of the hemp in his account of the ancient pleasure-grounds in the vicin ity of Cairo, famous above all for the sale of the basheesha, which is still greedily consumed by the dregs of the people, and from the consumption of which sprung the excesses, which led to the name of assassin' being given to the Saracens in the holy wars.'
Hemp is a plant which in the present day is ex tensively distributed, being cultivated in Europe, and extending through Persia to the southernmost parts of India. There is no doubt, therefore, that it might easily have been cultivated in Egypt. We are, indeed, unable at present to prove that it was cultivated in Egypt at an early period, and used for making garments, but there is nothing improb able in its having been so. Indeed, as it was known to various Asiatic nations, it could hardly have been unknown to the Egyptians. Hemp might thus have been used at an early period, alon,g with flax and wool, for making cloth for garments and for hanginas, and would be much valued until cotton and' the finer kinds of linen came to be known.
So many words are translated linen in the A. V. of the Scriptures, that it has been considered doubt ful whether they indicate only different qualities of the same thing, or totally different substances. The latter has by some been thought the most probable, on account of the poverty of the Hebrew language ; hence, instead of considering the one a synonym of the other, we have been led to inquire, as above, whether shesh may not signify cloth made of hemp irstead of flax. This would leave bad and tishtah as the only words peculiarly appropriated to linen and flax. The passages in which bad occurs have already been indicated [Bvssits]. On referring to them we find that it is used only when articles of clothing are alluded to. It is curious, and probably not accidental, that the Sanscrit word pat signifies cloth made from flax-like substances. It has been remarked that the official garments of the Hebrews, like those of the Egyptians, were all made of linen ; and we find in the seveml passages where bad occurs that linen garments and clothes, linen breeches, linen girdle, linen ephod, linen mitre, are intended ; so in Exod. xxxix. 28, and they made for Aaron and his sons a mitre of fine linen, and goodly bonnets of fine linen, and linen breeches of fine twined linen.' There is reason to believe that the mummy-cloths are composed very generally, if not universally, of linen cloth.— J. F. R.