Quote:Timothy Potter wrote on Sep 25
th, 2017 at 3:59pm:
Changing the angles of the woven shapes part way though the weaving process can also be done to make the pouch cupped in different ways. Although I've been too busy to test it, I think at least one of the original Tut slings was made with that last method.
Would you mind to quickly elaborate on that? Which specific details make you think that the angle was varied?
I'll try to explain it, but I'm not sure how clear I can be, and since I can't examine the original slings, it is just speculation on my part. Here's a photo of two of Tut's slings:
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/gallery/p1324.htmlIf you look at the sling on the right, you can clearly see that the lines formed by the warps meet at an angle in the center of the pouch. Weaving the double triangle shape does make an angle there, and does make a cupped pouch, but there are a couple of things that make me think a different shape was used.
1. The angle in the center seems shallower that what I usually get when I weave a Tut pouch. Now, it's obviously possible to get that angle by weaving the right shape of triangles, but some of my pouches that have less of an angle are more cupped than seems practical for a sling, so while that's not really conclusive, it does suggest to me that the shape of the pouch may be different, and the angle may have been achieved in a slightly different way.
2. The pouch is not lying flat in the picture, and weaving a double triangle makes a pouch that lies flat when folded as the pictured sling is. It may be that the pouch was smashed into that shape over the centuries and won't lie flat now, but it could also be that the pouch is woven in a shape that won't lie flat either.
Here's what my idea is: instead of weaving the triangles with an even slope, you start out with a steeper slope toward the ends of the pouch, and then weave a shallower slope, or no slope at all in the center of the pouch. You can picture it as triangles with bent sides, or even as two trapazoids joined along their shorter base. Either way, you would end up with a pouch that had a shallower angle at the ends, but wouldn't be too cupped in the middle, and wouldn't lie flat when folded up.
I have made a couple of pouches this way and it works, but I haven't done it on with fine thread to try to duplicate the Tut sling yet.
One other piece of evidence that seems to indicate that at least some slings were made this or a similar way, are the other two lesser-known slings from Tut's tomb. These, while the archaeologists in Howard Carter's excavations speculated that that might be some type of belt, are more likely slings in my opinion. They can be seen in these photographs:
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/gallery/p0087.html,
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/gallery/p0086.html,
and on this thread:
http://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1094667990They look different from the other two Tut slings, having what seem to be slightly cupped pouches, but not in the same way as what I weave as a Tut sling, and I think could be duplicated with variations of the method I described.
-Timothy Potter