<P> Starting in the 4th century BC silk began to reach the Hellenistic world by merchants who would exchange it for gold, ivory, horses or precious stones . Up to the frontiers of the Roman Empire, silk became a monetary standard for estimating the value of different products . Hellenistic Greece appreciated the high quality of the Chinese goods and made efforts to plant mulberry trees and breed silkworms in the Mediterranean basin . Sassanid Persia controlled the trade of silk destined for Europe and Byzantium . The Greek word for "silken" was σηρικός, from the name of the Seres (Σῆρες), according to Strabo the people from whom silk was first obtained . The Greek word gave rise to Latin sericum and ultimately Old English sioloc, Middle English silk . </P> <P> According to a story by Procopius, it was not until 552 AD that the Byzantine emperor Justinian obtained the first silkworm eggs . He had sent two Nestorian monks to Central Asia, and they were able to smuggle silkworm eggs to him hidden in rods of bamboo . While under the monks' care, the eggs hatched, though they did not cocoon before arrival . The church manufacture in the Byzantine Empire was thus able to make fabrics for the emperor, with the intention of developing a large silk industry in the Eastern Roman Empire, using techniques learned from the Sassanids . These gynecia had a legal monopoly on the fabric, but the empire continued to import silk from other major urban centres on the Mediterranean . The magnificence of the Byzantine techniques was not a result of the manufacturing process, but instead of the meticulous attention paid to the execution and decorations . The weaving techniques they used were taken from Egypt . The first diagrams of semple looms appeared in the 5th century . </P> <P> The Arabs, with their widening conquests, spread sericulture across the shores of the Mediterranean, leading to the development of sericulture in North Africa, Andalusia and Sicily . The interactions among Byzantine and Muslim silk - weaving centers of all levels of quality, with imitations made in Andalusia and Lucca, among other cities, have made the identification and date of rare surviving examples difficult to pinpoint . </P> <P> While the Chinese lost their monopoly on silk production, they were able to re-establish themselves as major silk supplier (during the Tang dynasty), and to industrialize their production in a large scale (during the Song dynasty). China continued to export high - quality fabric to Europe and the Near East along the silk road . </P>

Where did first painting on silk saree begin