The snowy fleece, and wind the twisted wool.
The goddess softly shook her silken vest,
That shed perfumes, and whispering thus address’d:

Homer, The Illiad

Linear B sign 145 LANA, a version of which is shown below, is the generally accepted ideogram for wool. Lana is Latin for “wool” and in Greek lenos, wolle in German, and ultimately comes from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root *wele- (1).  We see the word in English today as lanolin: the fatty substance extracted from the wool which is used in ointments, perfumes and medicines.^1,2,3

The Linear B tablets from Pylos come from 14-12^th BCE Greece;⁴ in which PY UN 267 is of particular interest to us:

Thus A(r)xotas gave spices to Thuestas the unguentboiler,^5,6 for unguent which is to be boiled:

coriander seed   720 liters
cyperus seed   720 liters
(unidentified sign 157)   16 units
fruits   300 liters
wine   720 liters
honey   72 liters
wool   6 kilograms
must   72 liters⁷

One issue that arose is that the amount of wool is very small when compared to the amount of all the other ingredients. This begs the question of what purpose did the wool serve in this perfume/unguent recipe.

A simple answer was that this “was a scribal error for the the syllabic sign MA which is used on Mycenae tablets 602-608 as an acrophonic abbreviation for ma-ra-tu-wo = μάραθρον = fennel, Chadwick leaves possibility open in his recent edition of Ventris and Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek, 1973.”⁷ However, as noted this raises more questions than it answers as it also calls into question its use in other tablets, where with each tablet the chance that these were all scribal errors becomes increasingly smaller.

A much more likely explanation comes from Laura B. Mazow in “The Root of the Problem: On the Relationship between Wool Processing and Lanolin Production”, where the use of wool is explained as a means to obtain lanolin. Two excerpts one from Pliny The Elder Naturalis Historia 29.10 and from Dioscorides De Materia Medica 2-74 (in the version from the citation).⁸ Each of the other ingredients do have uses in both medicines and cosmetics where the use of lanolin as an effective medium for application would make sense. Perhaps, the others ingredients are to be reduced first, or multiple batches are to be made; either of which can explain why much less wool is listed.

Dioscorides records in detail the procedures for preparing a variety for an oils for use in aromatics, flowers, fruits, leaves or roots, which are to be steeped or boiled in oil, then removed by pressing or straining. However, the materials for these tasks are rarely mentioned; for instance a basket (Materia Medica 1.55) and a linen cloth (Materia Medica 3.7). Therefore, using wool to filter out impurities back then is quite probable and continues to to modern times in chemical laboratories. Many grades of filter paper, cotton, glass, or lamb’s wool, are pushed into the stem of a funnel, as a common means of removing suspended particles of solid matter from a liquid remains common practice. The method’s efficacy of needing only a small amount of wool, which retains little of liquid, for filtering large volumes is a main reason.

An artefact particularly suited to the task was discovered by R. Engelbach in 1914 at Harageh in Egypt. The sherds were an “import of late MM IIa ware and associated with a limestone block inscribed with the name Sejusert II” dating back to 1900 BCE;⁷ Evans describes:

Fig. 119, c  I.2. is apparently part of a spout of remarkable form with a decorative imitation of a rivet head, pointing to an original precious metal. The white, red-spotted foliation on this recalls the foliate band on the bridge-spouted jar from Knossos, already illustrated, as supplying a near parallel to the Abydos vase. Fig. 119, f 1, 2, is part of an utensil of an unique character, perhaps some kind of filter, with a hollow stem, terminating in a perforated bulb so as to strain the liquid poured in through it. Above the bulb was a broad collar as if to rest the filler on the rim of a jar.⁹

Wi-ri-za may be cognate with ὐλίξω to “to strain”, “to filter” and may mean ὐλιοτήρ, “strainer”, “filter”,⁷ which would may have been a type of  wool suited for this purpose. Broken fibers, leftovers from the textile industry, could beaten and rolled in felt (a cognate to filter).^{10, 11} The process is older than spinning, has long been used as a strainer, and is hypothesized as the method the King of Colchis Aietes used to pan the “gold sands” in the rivers of this ancient Georgian Kingdom.¹² No wonder a dragon was said to  guard this gold-laden fleece in a sacred grove.¹³

Still one last possibility could be that the fleece was suspended above some type of boiler acting as a condenser for the production of the perfume/unguent. Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia XXXI, in the 1^st Century CE mentions that fleeces were strung about the ship became moist with evaporated water so that fresh water may be extracted from them. Alexander of Aphrodisias in the 3^rd Century CE, in his commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorolgica, mentions of “condensing and collecting the vapour in appropriate covers”. John of Gaddesden wrote in his Rosa Angelica: mentions filtering of sea-water by means of boiling and condensation of the vapor on linen. Conrad Gesner in his Thesaurus Euonymus Philiatri in 1555 CE (English edition in 1559 CE), from which he credits Abū al-Qāsim al-Zahrawī (936-1013 CE) a great Moorish medical encyclopaedist and which similar depictions on page 81 (a’) and (b’).¹⁵  

All three of these possibilities need not be mutually exclusive. Each or all of these methods could have been employed in antiquity depending on the perfume-boiler’s needs. The resourcefulness of our ancestors is an inspiration for us to use ingredients for multiple uses via multiple methods. Our limit is our imagination!  

References:
¹ https://www.etymonline.com/word/wool
² https://www.etymonline.com/word/lanolin
³ Holly Young, “A language family tree – in pictures”, The Guardian, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/education/gallery/2015/jan/23/a-language-family-tree-in-pictures
⁴ Eric H. Cline, The Oxford Handbook of: The Bronze Age Agean (ca. 3000-1000 BC), Oxford University Press, 2010, page 359
⁵ Note: Another “perfume-boiler” as stated by Megan Moulos in her Master of Arts paper at Florida State University, “The Textile and Perfumed Oil Industries of Mycenaean Pylos: Production, Scope, and Trade of Two Value-Added Goods”, Spring 2015, page 25.
⁶ José L. Melena with the collaboration of Richard J. Firth, THE PYLOS TABLETS, Third Edition [Second corrected version], Anejos de Veleia, Series Maior 14, 2022, page 204.
⁷ Lily Y. Beck, Curt W. Beck, “Wi-ri-za Wool on Linear B Tablets of Perfume Ingredients”, American Journal of Archaeology, Volume 82, Number 2 (Spring, 1978), University of Chicago Press, pages 213-215.
⁸ Laura B. Mazow, “The Root of the Problem: On the Relationship between Wool Processing and Lanolin Production”, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 27.1, 2014, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276914109_The_Root_of_the_Problem_On_the_Relationship_between_Wool_Processing_and_Lanolin_Production
⁹ Sir Arthur Evans, The Palace of Minos at Knossos: A Comparative Account of The Succesive Stages of The Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos, Volume II, MacMillan and Co., Limited, ST. Martin’s Street, London 1928, Oxford University Press, page 212-213.
¹⁰ https://www.etymonline.com/word/felt#etymonline_v_39327
¹¹ https://www.etymonline.com/word/filter?ref=etymonline_crossreference#etymonline_v_5944
¹² A. Okrostsvaridze, N. Gagnidze, K. Akimidze, ‘A modern field investigation of the mythical “gold sands” of the ancient Colchis Kingdom and “Golden Fleece” phenomena’, Quaternary International, Volume 409, Part A, 21 July 2016, Pages 61-69.
¹³ “In Search of Myths & Heroes: Jason & The Argonauts”, https://www.pbs.org/mythsandheroes/myths_four_jason.html
¹⁴ Padraic Colum, The Golden Fleece and The Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles, The MacMillan Company, 1921, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37881
¹⁵ Science & Civilisation in China Volume 5 Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part IV: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Apparatus, Theories, and Gifts, Cambridge University Press, 5th printing 2020, pages 60, 61, 81.
¹⁶ Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Abū al-Qāsim al-Zahrāwī”. Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abu-al-Qasim.