Researching the silk industry in Lebanon, I happened across a reference to the Bsous Silk Museum. [1] Mollusk Silk, the blogger who led me there, asks an interesting question that might have tickled N.I. Vavilov’s love for languages and words.
I am now curious about the name of the town itself. I understand that “Bsous” comes originally from a Syriac word, and wonder whether it might be linked to the word “byssus”, which appears in the Old Testament – in Exodus, where it is often translated as “linen” or “wool” or even “yarn”. Byssus is the term for the silk-like threads that some types of mollusks … secrete to anchor themselves to the sea-floor.
Merriam-Webster tells me that byssus comes from Middle English bissus, from Latin byssus, from Greek byssos flax, of Semitic origin; akin to Hebrew būș linen cloth. …
You can probably figure out my question. Do any of you know whether “Bsous” the town derives from the same word as “byssus”, and whether there was any ancient connection between its land-based silk-making and sea silk? Bsous isn’t a coastal town, so I’m guessing that the term “byssus”/Bsous was used by analogy, but I’m curious whether it was applied first to silk worms and then to silk clams, or vice versa.
Nobody answered Mollusk Silk at the blog; anyone here care to comment?
More fascinating still, I had no idea that fabric could be made from bivalve byssus. It can. Not only that, it is still apparently being made on a small island off Sardinia. Must visit.
Notes:- Be warned; the site plays music at you. [↩]
