Textile production in Egypt from the Old to the Middle Kingdom: Reconstructing the chaîne opératoire

Textiles were fundamental to ancient societies, yet are under-represented in archaeology. Even in Egypt, where the dry desert has created exceptional preservation conditions for organic materials, very few of these surviving textiles have been studied in detail. In the last few decades Egyptian textiles have seen some increase in interest. There is however much that remains unknown, especially regarding textiles from the Old- to Middle Kingdom (OK-MK, 2686-1650 BCE). This gap in our knowledge cannot be explained by a lack of evidence, since there are many large pieces of fabric from this period preserved in museums. Moreover, this period has produced a number of iconographical depictions of textile workshops. These models and paintings form the base of our current knowledge of ancient Egyptian textile production, and have been generally interpreted through the lens of West-European production methods. Yet the extant material reveals that the production process would have looked completely different in Egypt. This project aims to reconstruct the chaîne opératoire by comparing the attributes of the physical textiles with the iconographic evidence. The study comprises collections of OK-MK textiles housed in museums, complemented by data from recently excavated material found in dated contexts. By combining this data with iconography and experimental archaeology, I expect to gain significant new insights into an understudied period of textile history.