or BYSSUM, in Antiquity, a fine thready cloth produced in India, Egypt, and the vicinity of Elis, of which the richest apparel was made, especially that worn by the Jewish and Egyptian priests. 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. 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 great lords alone wore in this country as well as in Egypt;" an account which agrees perfectly well with that given by Pliny and 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 crimson or purple colour. Some authors suppose byssus to have been cotton; some the linum asbestinum; while others conceive it to have been the bunch of silky hair found adhering to the pinna marina, by which the latter attaches itself to neighbouring bodies. There were two sorts of byssus; that of Elis, and that of Judaea, which was the finest. Bonfrerius remarks, that there must have been two sorts of byssus, one finer than ordinary, inasmuch as 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. (See Yates, Tectrinum Antiquorum, p. 267, &c.)