canvas
A heavy, coarse, closely woven fabric of cotton, hemp, or flax, used for awnings, tents, sails and oil paintings.
*EtymologyMiddle English canevas, from Old French and from Medieval Latin canavasium, from Latin cannabis, "hemp" from Greek kannabis, Cannabis sativa. Possibly from Ugro-Finnish.
can·na·bis 1. A tall, annual dioecious plant (Cannabis sativa), native to central Asia and having alternate, palmately divided leaves and tough bast fibers. 2. Any of several mildly euphoriant, intoxicating hallucinogenic drugs, such as ganja, hashish, or marijuana, prepared from various parts of this plant. AHD
Herodotus 4.74-75. In writing about burial customs of the Scythians describes their use of hemp for vapor baths. [Paraphrased.]
They carry the dead around from house to house for 40 days. Then they set up a space for a steam bath, enclosing it with wool mats. In the center they make a pit into which they throw hot stones. Then they throw the hemp seeds onto the hot stones. "No Greek steam could surpass its fumes. The Scythians howl in ecstasy."
Hemp was also used by the Thracians and Scythians as a linen substitute.
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