Hi! I was googling Ancient Egyptian clothing when I came across this tidbit on Wikipedia: “Wool was known, but considered impure. Only the wealthy wore animal fibers that were the object of taboos. They were used on occasion for overcoats, but were forbidden in temples and sanctuaries.” Do you know if that’s true? I think that’s pretty interesting, if so!

thatlittleegyptologist:

Well I went to the wiki for Egyptian clothing, followed the source cited to a site called ‘ancient-egypt-priests.com’ and on their page for Ancient Egyptian Life I word searched for wool usage. Guess who’s still not invited to anything Ancient Egyptian ever again?: IT’S FUCKING HERODOTUS

To quote the page:

The Greek historian Herodot (5th cent. B.C.) wrote that no “products of living animals” must be worn in an Egyptian temple (book II, 81). This meant wool in particular. So they had to cloth in linen and wear sandals made of papyrus. There is no particular costume in the Old and Middle Kingdom. From the New Kingdom on we know elaborate skirts and dresses, similar to the ones which can be found in the representations of the Egyptian upper class. The “cheriheb” (=lecturer) can be seen often with a linen sash over their chest, and sometimes he is portrayed with two feathers in the hair.

Oh. My. No

I mean the Egyptians did wear linen and papyrus (more often palm frond and here’s a British Museum article on shoes) sandals, but the rest of it is pretty much complete horseshit. 

Let’s start with ‘no products of living animals must be worn in an Egyptian temple’ and then obliterate it with the following images:

Oh hey that’s a wab-priest

OH HEY IT’S TUTANKHAMUN WEARING A LEOPARD SKIN

Holy shit two Hm-priests wearing leopard skins????

Fuck you Herodotus, the leopard skin is literally part of the uniform for an Egyptian priest as evidenced by the Egyptians themselves. 

To quote the page further:

The “cheriheb” (=lecturer) can be seen often with a linen sash over their chest, and sometimes he is portrayed with two feathers in the hair.

First off they mean a Hry-Hbt (Herry-Hebet) and ‘Lector Priest’ because if we’re going to do this properly I might as well correct their poor translation. Also it’s not a linen sash, it’s a leopard skin. Here’s evidence of that from a stele from Saqqara of a Lector Priest Pia and his wife Jia from the National Museum of Warsaw:

Let’s take a closer look at the top right figure:

Oh…that’s a leopard face.

As for two feathers, that may be true of Ptolemaic priests, I don’t really know, but as shown above it’s not really true of Pharaonic priests is it? 

Ahh go on, one more image because I’m going to ram my point about animal furs home:

HOLY BUTTERBALLS GUYS THAT’S THREE PRIESTS WITH LEOPARD SKINS AND NO FEATHERS

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Now before I get into the wrongness of apparently there being no style of clothing in the Old and Middle Kingdoms and only the New Kingdom was fancy (lol whut) I’ll return to the usage of wool. 

The wikipedia article says it’s considered impure, and cites that site, which cites Herodotus:

They wear a linen tunic fringed about the legs, and called calasiris; over this they have a white woollen garment thrown on afterwards. Nothing of woollen, however, is taken into their temples or buried with them, as their religion forbids it.

Herodotus, Euterpe, 81.2 

Everywhere I’ve looked I can only find people citing Herodotus as the sole source for this. I can find nothing from Pharaonic Egypt that says that wool was impure. I’d be willing to be corrected on this if someone can find something from an Egyptian source that states that wool was impure, but so far as I can see it really isn’t. 

As a further point, the sheep we’re referring to as the source of all the wool the Egyptians are getting is the species most common to Northern Africa; the Barbary Sheep. They look like this:

Then there are the two domesticated sheep varieties from Ancient Egypt:

ovis longipes – might be extinct? I can’t find any sheep genus with these horns and it’s usually how Khnum is depicted (I’m citing

Manfred Lurker, Lexikon der Götter und Symbole der alten Ägypter, Scherz 1998, pp.226f here):

ovis platyura, which are apparently more commonly known as fat tailed sheep and how Amun was depicted sometimes:

Of all the things I expected to be showing this Sunday afternoon it certainly wasn’t butt sheep. Amun is now forever know as Fat Bottomed Girl and everyone should sing Fat Bottomed Girls at him when he is seen.

I mean, you’ll get some wool off these sheep but Egypt is a hot climate and I can’t imagine many Egyptians wanting to wear wool when it’s 43C (109F) outside. As far as I can tell Sheep’s wool is used mainly for spinning into thread to hold linen pieces together and also for fly swats to get rid of flies or some ceremonial equipment like a flail. It doesn’t gain any form of widespread usage until the Ptolemaic era, which would explain why Herodotus would be all ‘hey look at these dumb Egyptians. Won’t even wear wool because it’s ‘unclean’ what idiots’. Goat hair was also made into fabric at times, as a find at el Amarna proves. A two-strand rope made of camel hair was found and dated to the Old Kingdom. Unlike plant fibres which are often mentioned in ancient texts, wool is not encountered in literature. It may have served above all the poorer parts of the people and marginal populations like the nomadic tribes of the deserts. Wikipedia mentions overcoats, but I really don’t think the Egyptians were wearing coats at any point. A shawl or cape maybe? Not a coat.

Finally, as for the charge of Old and Middle Kingdom fashions not being apparent but New Kingdom fashions being good, that site is wrong again. There are no discernable large changes in mode of dress for the Egyptians over the course of their history until the Ptolemaic period. Most men wore kilts or tunics of linen and women wore dresses of linen that were formed by wrapping a large sheet of linen a certain way – much like dresses of Greek women. Same principle. The only thing that changed was pleating. Old Kingdom pleating was horizontal, Middle Kingdom pleating was vertical and more intricate, and New Kingdom pleating was vertical and quite fine. Things like circular capes or shawls were common in all periods, but beading came in during the New Kingdom after they mastered fine glasswork. Starching was known in all periods.

In summary: If Herodotus was alive today I’d make him my bitch for making me constantly have to disprove his bullshit