The gesture before the fibre

Up to this point the Manual has treated the animal or the plant as living origin. In The material before the figure sheep, goat, cattle, dromedary, flax and wild fauna entered for the material they contribute, not for the figure they make up. What lies ahead are chapters on the fibre already separated from its living support: wool as a lock that is spun, flax as a filament that is retted, leather as a hide that is tanned. Between one stretch and the other a gesture is missing. This chapter deals with that gesture.

It is not a matter of a transition or of a minor technical step. A distinction is needed: the hand that shears a sheep, the hand that plucks the hair of a moulting dromedary, the hand that closes the cut around the hooves to remove the whole hide, the hand that pulls up a field of flax by the roots, do not do the same thing. Each material demands a different gesture, at a different moment of the year, with different consequences for the fibre or for the hide, which are not yet fibre or hide. A fleece badly taken off, a stem badly pulled up or a hide badly opened already determine what the spinner, the weaver or the tanner will be able to do afterwards.

There is a second reason for starting here. Some materials can be obtained in more than one way, and the silhouette changes with the gesture. Wool has been shorn since the millennium before our era, but before that it was plucked; flax is pulled up for fibre and reaped with a sickle for seed; the goat is not washed before shearing because its hair is short and clean, the sheep is washed when there is water. These are not technical curiosities: they are the differences that separate an observed figure from a generic one.

What follows orders the chapter by the material obtained and by the gesture that separates it: sheep and fleece, goat and hair, cattle and hide, dromedary and hair, flax and stem, and finally the whole hide destined for a wineskin, a container or leather.

Wild fauna does not open a chain of its own here. Hunting could provide hides, and some cases are documented as hide, parchment, luxury or ritual use; but the Manual does not have sufficient evidence to turn those hides into ordinary warm covering for the figures. That is why it is not developed as a productive gesture parallel to shearing, moulting, the pulling of flax or the flaying of domestic livestock. When a wild hide is needed, it will be dealt with case by case under leather, props or scene.

The sheep: the hand before the spindle

The first gesture on the sheep is not that of the thread, nor of the loom, nor of the dye. It is that of the hand that separates the fleece from the body of the animal once a year. That gesture had two historical forms. Until the introduction of flexible iron in shears, around 1000 BC, wool was plucked while it was loosened by the natural spring moult. Since then it has been cut with shears. That technical transition was recorded by the historian of ancient technology Robert Forbes in 1956, a datum that reaches the Manual cited through Borowski¹. The difference matters for the Manual: the silhouette of the ancient plucker is not that of the shearer with shears, nor is the animal left the same.

The calendar of shearing is strict. Once a year, in April or May, before the summer heat sets in. The Hebrew term is gēz (Deut 18:4); the shearer, gōzēz (1 Sam 25:4). A single man with simple shears can do between 20 and 30 head a day. Shearing brings many people together because it concentrates the whole annual yield of a flock into a few days; the biblical narratives describe it as a festive occasion, with food and drink (1 Sam 25; 2 Sam 13:23–28). The image of the solitary shearer that the popular imagination tends to give this figure does not correspond to the trade: a large shearing needed helpers to hold the animal, turn it over, gather the fleece and stack it.

The quality of the fleece depends less on the exact moment of shearing —which is always spring— than on what is done with the sheep beforehand. If there is water, the sheep are washed first: the Song of Songs speaks of sheep «que suben del lavadero» (that come up from the washing) (Song 4:2; 6:6, RVR1909). The fleece thus comes off clean, in a single piece, and is sold by weight. If there is no water, it is not washed and the fleece is sold dirty, as a complete piece, because the dirt distorts the calculation of weight. The Hebrew term for that complete unweighed piece is gizzāh, and it appears in the narrative of Gideon’s fleece (Judg 6:37–40). The difference is not a small one: washed fleece weighs less, is worth more per kilo, and requires access to running water; dirty fleece weighs more, is transported as it is, and leaves the later task of washing to the spinner.

What the shearer’s hand leaves on the ground is fleece, not yet fibre. The sheep goes back to the flock and will produce another fleece the following year. What separates fleece from fibre is the later work of washing —if it was not done before—, carding and combing, which belong to the chapter on wool already separated from the animal. The sheep’s skin is not obtained at shearing: it is obtained only when the animal is slaughtered, and that gesture is dealt with later in this same chapter, in the section common to sheep, goat, cattle and dromedary. Here the sheep is closed through the fibre it has yielded while alive.

There is one last use of the gesture that the Manual must name even though it is not its task to develop it. The calendar of shearing —late April, May, early June— is a precise seasonal indication. A scene of the biblical nativity scene set in late spring or early summer, in a town of Judah, finds in a shearer figure or in a freshly separated fleece a temporal anchor that the reader recognises without the figure having to explain it. This is the case of the Visitation (Luke 1, 39–56). The treatment of the scene and the composition of the figures belong to the block of scenes; what this research leaves available here is the gesture, its calendar and the material it yields, already on the work table when that scene is tackled.

The goat: the hand before the sack

The shearing of the goat is and is not the same as that of the sheep. The gesture is similar —shears, one pass a year, late spring—, but the differences matter for the silhouette. The goat is not washed before being shorn. Its hair is short, straight and, as a rule, clean; the operation of prior washing, which for the sheep requires a washing place or a watercourse, is superfluous for the goat. And the animal is not shorn the same way at every age. Older goats have only belly, chest and flanks shorn; younger ones, the whole body. The shearer does not act on the animal in a single way, and the image of a freshly shorn goat is not that of a freshly shorn sheep: what remains on its body differs according to its age, what the shearing yields is less, and what the hand holds has another feel.

The calendar is May or June, slightly later than that of the sheep. The internal order of the flock is strict: the goats that give no milk are shorn first. The reason is a Bedouin belief that the sculptor should know even without sharing it: it is believed that shearing reduces milk production, and therefore the milking goats are shorn last, when their milking cycle is already over. The datum reaches the Manual cited through Borowski¹, who takes it from Pravolotsky and Pravolotsky. There is no evidence that this belief holds, but there is evidence that it organises the order of work in the flock. A scene of goat shearing set on its exact day in the calendar does not show all the animals at the same time: it shows some first, others afterwards.

The yield of shearing is far lower than that of the sheep. An adult animal yields between 300 and 500 grams of hair a year; Hirsch, cited through Borowski², observed that the income from shearing barely covers the costs. That modest figure is not accidental: the goat of the Levant is not raised for refined textile fibre. Its hair is by nature coarse, straight and dark. It is not refined, not combed like wool, not mixed with other fleeces to improve its feel. What the goat yields is constructive material: a strong fibre, resistant to water and sun, suited to weaving surfaces that cover and insulate rather than to making garments that wrap the body. The quality of the hair is not decided in the gesture of shearing —because that allows few options—, but in the choice of the goat itself: the black Bedouin goat of the Negev and Sinai gives a rougher hair than the Damascus goat of the inhabited hills (The material before the figure).

What comes from the goat enters a chain different from that of wool. The raw hair, still with all its impurities, is spun into thick threads and woven into coarse surfaces: tents, sacks, cordage (The material before the figure; the corresponding sheets under tent, sack, cordage). Its entry into clothing in the strict sense is exceptional and belongs to sackcloth, the biblical penitential garment (Gen 37:34; 2 Sam 3:31; 1 Kgs 21:27; Joel 1:13), which will be dealt with in its place within the stretch on penitential garments or in the specific scenes of the block of scenes that call for it. The skin of the kid and of the adult goat is not obtained at shearing: it is obtained only at slaughter, and that gesture belongs to the section common to sheep, goat, cattle and dromedary, later in this chapter. Here the goat closes through the hair it has yielded while alive.

Cattle: the slaughter before the leather

Cattle enter The gesture before the fibre by a different door. The sheep and the goat yield their material while living: every spring shearing strips them of fleece or hair, but the animal stays in the flock and will produce another shearing the following year. Cattle yield no fibre. What they contribute to the Manual —the heavy hide that will become leather— leaves the animal’s body only once, at slaughter. Cattle are a hinge: they mark the passage from the gesture that gathers from a living body to the gesture that separates from a body already dead.

The slaughter of cattle has no fixed calendar. Unlike shearing, it is not governed by the season or by the physiology of the animal. It is decided by the occasion —an important visit, a cultic banquet, a prescribed sacrifice—, by the availability of the animal, and by the economy of the herd. Slaughtering an ox or a cow is a serious decision: the animal still on its feet is worth more than the slaughtered animal, because while it lives it ploughs, pulls carts, threshes, gives milk and reproduces. A yoke of oxen was one of the commonest ways of measuring a man’s wealth (Job 1:3; 42:12). Hence cattle are slaughtered only when the occasion justifies it: Abraham chooses a calf for the three guests (Gen 18:6–8); Saul receives a fattened calf in the house of the medium of En-Dor (1 Sam 28:24); the fattened calves —‘egel marbēq— are reserved for particular occasions.

The quality of the leather is not decided in the gesture of slaughter. It is decided earlier, in the life of the animal: in its breed, its age, its feeding, its work. The leather of an adult ox, marked by the yoke, is not the leather of a calf raised for the table. The first is thick, resistant, suited to soles, load-bearing belts and larger containers; the second is finer, soft, suited to clothing or to pieces that need to fold. The distinction matters for the Manual: the sculptor who places a Roman soldier’s sandal and a shepherd’s wineskin is not showing the same leather, even though both come from the same species. The narrative of Wenamun —c. 1100 BC, cited through Borowski¹— records 500 cattle hides sent from Canaan to Egypt as goods for exchange, a datum useful for the Manual not for the figure but for what it proves: in the Iron Age, cattle hide was already circulating as a codified commodity.

What slaughter yields is the whole body of the animal, and the leather is only one part. The meat goes to consumption, the fat to the offering or to preserving, the bones to the craftsman’s workshop, the dung to the field or to fuel —all these destinations remain outside the chain of clothing, which is what this research is about. The leather leaves the body in the gesture of flaying, which is a technical operation with its own rules and is dealt with later in this chapter, in the section common to sheep, goat, cattle and dromedary. The section on cattle closes here, not through the fibre the animal has yielded while alive —because it yields none— but through the position it occupies: the first animal of The gesture before the fibre whose material is obtained only after death.

The dromedary: the moult before the sack

The dromedary is the only animal of The gesture before the fibre that yields its hair without an active gesture of cutting. It is not shorn with shears. It is not clipped in parts according to age, like the goat. Its hair is obtained at the time of the natural spring moult, when it loosens from the skin in large tufts and can be gathered by hand from the animal’s own body or from the ground where the animal has left it. The human action is one of gathering, not of cutting. The technical gesture this section describes is therefore closer to the gesture of flax pulled up by the roots than to that of shearing: it takes advantage of a moment in the organism’s cycle when the material is already available. That the hair is plucked and not shorn is recorded by Borowski¹, who notes it as a distinctive feature of the handling of the camel as against that of small livestock.

The calendar is strict: spring. The moult of the dromedary is not a long or constant phenomenon, but a relatively short window in which the hair comes away from the body. Outside that moment, the animal yields no hair, and forcing it —cutting it with shears, for example— would produce an inferior fibre and harm the animal needlessly. The operation is therefore carried out once a year, in each animal’s spring, and it is coordinated by whoever owns the herd. When the herd belongs to a single owner, the work is individual; when it belongs to a caravan or to a larger tribal unit, the gathering brings several herders together and is done in a few days.

The yield is modest: between 2 and 3 kilos of hair per animal a year, a datum that Borowski¹ records on the basis of pre-industrial observations. The figure is higher than that of the goat but markedly lower than that of the sheep. What the dromedary yields is, moreover, a fibre qualitatively close to goat hair: coarse, dark, resistant, unsuited to fine fabrics without mixing. The Manual does not treat it as a substitute for wool, but as another constructive material. The rarity of camel hair in archaeological finds —3 textiles out of 1,727 in the table of Shamir and Sukenik³— confirms that its use in first-century clothing was not ordinary. What is documented, and should be named even though it does not belong to the Nativity cycle, is the garment of camel’s hair that the Gospels attribute to John the Baptist (Matt 3:4; Mark 1:6). That reference is the principal iconographic entry of camel hair into Christian tradition, and its treatment will belong to the specific scenes of the block of scenes that require it.

What comes from the dromedary in spring —raw hair, in tufts, dark— enters a chain similar to that of goat hair: it is spun thick, woven into coarse surfaces, and supplies above all props (cordage, sackcloth, travel rugs), not clothing properly speaking. The large hides of the dromedary, the straps and the leather sacks —the kunzu that appears in the annals of Esarhaddon (Borowski¹)— come not from the gesture of moulting but from slaughter, and are dealt with later in this chapter, in the section common to sheep, goat, cattle and dromedary. The section on the dromedary closes here through the hair it has yielded while alive, at the only moment of the year when the animal sheds it.

Flax: the pulling before the retting

Flax enters The gesture before the fibre by a route different from that of the animals. The sheep, the goat and the dromedary yield a material that grows on the body; flax hides it inside the stem. It is not shorn, not gathered by moulting, not flayed. It is pulled up. That first gesture matters because the useful fibre of flax is not in the leaf or the seed, but in long bundles that run along the stem. Cutting too low or too high, reaping for seed or pulling for fibre are not indifferent variants: they decide from the field the length, the cleanliness and the quality of what can later be spun.

The harvest does not produce a single kind of flax. Orendi, in her archaeobotanical study of flax cultivation in the southern Levant, records a distinction that is decisive for the Manual: young green plants give finer fibre; plants beginning to ripen, when the stem turns from green to yellow, give coarser fibre but one suited to good-quality clothing; plants already golden and with ripe capsules are better directed towards heavy textiles or ropes.⁴ The figure pulling flax, therefore, is not harvesting a neutral material. It is choosing a moment. A field of flax destined for fine fibre does not look the same as one left to ripen for seed or rope: the colour of the stem changes, as do the presence of capsules, the stiffness of the plant and the gesture of whoever gathers it into bundles.

The pulling opens a slow chain. Pliny the Elder describes for flax a sequence of harvesting by pulling, drying, retting in water, pressing, beating, combing, spinning and further work on the cloth once woven.⁵ It would be unwise to transfer every detail of Pliny as if it were a local photograph of Judaea, because his view is Mediterranean and encyclopaedic; but it does serve to fix the type of process: flax requires water, time, controlled fermentation and mechanical separation before it becomes spinnable fibre. What leaves the field is neither thread nor fabric, but stems pulled up, tied, dried and still closed around the fibre.

This need for water separates flax from wool in the scene. A shearing can be organised wherever the flock is; flax, by contrast, points to cultivable and irrigated areas. In The material before the figure the geographical prudence was fixed: for Bethlehem and Jerusalem, linen should be thought of as an accessible regional material, not necessarily produced beside the house; for Galilee, it is better to look towards the north of the Jordan valley and the area of Beth Shean rather than automatically depend on Jericho. In a village scene, therefore, a linen cloth may be plausible; a field of flax or a retting operation calls for a place with the water, soil and agricultural economy to sustain it.

What flax yields in this chapter is pulled stems, not finished fibre. The seed, linseed oil, medicinal or lubricant uses, bleaching, dyeing, fine linen, shatnez, priestly garments, shrouds and the linen tunic belong to later chapters. Here only the first vegetable gesture is closed: the hand that takes the whole plant, gathers it into bundles and sets it on its way towards the water. The fibre begins afterwards.

The hide: the knife before the wineskin

Unlike wool, goat hair and dromedary hair, the hide is not obtained from a living animal. This should be made clear from the outset: the spindle and the sack work on what the animal yields without losing it; the wineskin, by contrast, requires that the animal has ceased to be one. That is why this section gathers what is common to sheep, goat, cattle and dromedary, and is not repeated for each: the technical chain that follows slaughter is, in essence, the same for all four.

The most detailed description of that chain comes from Pravolotsky 1979, cited through Borowski¹. After slaughter, the skin is cut around the hooves and the neck and removed whole, without opening it along the belly — the wineskin needs a continuous bag. It is buried for about a week to start the hair coming away; it is dug up and rubbed with a stone until the hair is removed. It is washed. The openings are sewn up, leaving a mouth, and it is filled for a time with vegetable matter —pomegranate rind or other plants, according to the intended use— to seal and tan the walls. It is emptied, washed, and filled again for a week with black olives that have been boiled and dried. After a final emptying and washing, the wineskin is ready. What looks like a single procedure is in fact a sequence of waits: a week buried, another week with olives; in between, the short gestures of the knife, the stone, the needle.

The commonest destination for that whole skin is the skin for liquids —water, milk, wine, oil—, hence its constant presence in any domestic or travel scene. It is not, therefore, an object of the nativity scene that can be added as decoration: it is the piece that justifies slaughtering the animal when the fibre has already been harvested or when the flock needs to be regulated. The dromedary’s hide, thicker and more resistant, enters a separate category: the kunzu, leather sacks mentioned in the annals of Esarhaddon (Borowski¹), point to a use in transport rather than as a domestic wineskin, although the technical chain at the start is the same.

What this section establishes is the origin of the hide; its transformation into straps, footwear, harness and other props belongs to the chapter on leather, where tanned leather will be dealt with as a finished material. The distinction matters: here the animal ends and the wineskin begins; there the wineskin ends and the objects begin.

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