or BYSSUM, a fine thready matter produced in India, Egypt, and the vicinity of Elis in Achaia, of which the richest apparel was anciently made, especially that worn by the priests, both Jewish and Egyptian. Some interpreters render the Greek Βύσσος, which occurs both in the Old and New Testament, by fine linen. But other versions, as Calvin's, and the Spanish one printed at Venice in 1556, explain the word by silk; and yet byssus must have been different from our silk, as appears from a multitude of ancient writers, and particularly from Julius Pollux. M. Simon, who renders the word by fine linen, adds a note to explain it, bearing "that there was a fine kind of linen very dear, which the great lords alone wore in this country as well as in Egypt;" an account which agrees perfectly well with that given by Hesychius, as well as with the observation of Bochart, that the byssus was a finer kind of linen, which was frequently dyed of a purple colour. Some authors will have the byssus to be the same with our cotton; others take it for the linen asbestinum; and a third class conceive it to have been the lock or bunch of silky hair found adhering to the pimpa marina, by which the latter fastens itself to neighbouring bodies. Authors usually distinguish two sorts of byssus; that of Elis, and that of Judea, which was the finest. Of this latter the priestly ornaments were made. Bonferrinis remarks, that there must have been two sorts of byssus, one finer than ordinary, by reason there are two Hebrew words used in Scripture to denote byssus; one of which is always used in speaking of the habit of the priests, and the other in alluding to that of the Levites.