Important Products of Antiquity (2)

A third product of the economy was silk. History tells us that silk began to exist in China more than 4,000 years ago, and the Chinese kept this monopoly for many thousands of years. If a foreigner tried to carry the secret of silk out of China, he was killed at once.

The Chinese exported silk along a road that left China, passed through the countries of Central Asia, either north of the Black Sea or via Constantinople, and reached Europe. This road became known as 'the Silk Road'.

Silk was always a very expensive article. Only kings and emperors had the right to own anything made of silk.

In China silk had the same value as gold. The Chinese knew so well how to make silk paper that only the king could use this silk paper for writing.

An interesting thing discovered in the tomb of one of the Pharaohs of Egypt, some 3,000 years old, in the 'Valley of the Kings', was a silk garment imported from China.

We know that in antiquity silk was something that could be exchanged for gold, ivory and even horses.

In the Roman Empire silk was a great craze, selling for 300 denarii, which was a commander's pay for a whole year.

It is said that the Roman Empire learned the secret of silk in the 6th century, in the time of the emperor Justinian, who built the famous Santa Sophia (Ayasofya), Santa Irene (Aya İrini) and the Sunken Basilica Cistern (Yerebatan Sarnıcı), and who sent two monks to China to learn the secret of silk. The monks returned from China hiding cocoons inside their staffs, so as not to be caught by the guards, who carried out a very serious check.

We also know that the Japanese learned this secret from Chinese slave girls who were taken to Japan in the 4th century, and India in the 5th. But in the Roman Empire silk was made not only in Bursa, which was the centre of the mulberry trees; they took the technique from the Sassanids of Persia, who in turn had learned almost everything from India, and made silk in the east.

Silk, as is known, is obtained from the saliva of the silkworm, which in contact with the air condenses and turns into fibre. In spring the worm's egg wraps itself in a cocoon that will give the moth. To use the fibres, before the moth is born, the cocoon is put in hot water, and that is how silk is made, by feeding many fibres onto the spinning wheels. To obtain one kilo of silk 10 kilos of cocoons are needed, and for 1 kilo of cocoons at least 500 or 600 cocoons.