Search

Throughout her career, Eva Andersson Strand has built a cohesive picture of past landscapes of textile production, creating a model for different scales of manufacture from household basic output to fully developed workshops. By combining information from different sources, she reconstructs the different facets of an industry at the heart of past economies. In the Nile valley however, an extensive questioning on the nature of the textile economy has not yet been conducted. Using Eva Andersson Strand’s approach as a starting point, we will examine diverse modes of manufacture, focusing on two contexts: 1) New Kingdom Egypt (c. 1550–1070 bce) and 2) Meroitic and Postmeroitic Sudan (c. 350 bce – 550 ce). We will question the existence or absence of different levels of textile production in the ancient Nile valley.

Funerary masks played a crucial role in ancient Egyptian burial practices, as part of the rituals to ensure a successful afterlife. This study presents the first comprehensive analysis of a gilded mummy mask from the Roman period in Egypt from the collections of The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. Portraying a young female, the mask belongs to a distinctive group of mummy masks, whose origins can be identified to be coming from the Dakhlah and Kharga oases. The construction of the mask (plaster, textiles) and the constituents of its polychromy (pigments, binding media) was analysed using various non- and micro-destructive methods: imaging, cross-section analysis, optical microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy coupled to energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. Additionally, samples were taken for palaeoproteomic analysis with liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. A wide range of pigments such as yellow and red ochre, carbon-based black, and Egyptian blue were identified, reflecting common materials in polychromy in Egypt during the Roman period. Notably, indigo was detected, suggesting its usage in mixtures to render purple hues. Analysis of adhesives and media identified plant gum and collagen-based animal glue. Proteomic analysis identified Equus asinus (donkey) as the predominant protein source for the collagen-based glue. The results shed light on the materials and techniques employed in ancient polychromy in Egypt in the Roman period, further enriching our understanding of artistic practices at the time.

This paper exploits the rich but little-studied corpus of archaeological textiles found in modern Sudan and Nubia and dated to the Meroitic and Postmeroitic periods (c.350 BCE–550 CE). It allies current approaches developed in the field of mortuary archaeology with an in-depth analysis of textile artefacts discovered in situ in the graves of the ancient Sudanese people. Going beyond the simple description of textile items and their potential place in the tomb, the concept of funerary chaîne opératoire is used to trace and interpret textile gestures around the deceased. Through many examples and the detailed case study of an ‘archer’ grave from Gebel Adda (Lower Nubia), this article aims at demonstrating the active and important role of textiles in the transformation of the dead, from an inert body to a revered ancestor.

Overview of the Fashioning Sudan project (ERC 101039416)

Project report. Presentation of the project's aims, approaches, and methods, as well as description of planned activities. Complete version of ATR 64 available at https://www.atnfriends.com/download/ATR_64_complete_webversionFINAL1.pdf

The present report presents the archaeological, epigraphic, conservation, and landscape works carried out by the Middle Kingdom Theban Project – a project under the auspices of the University of Alcalá (UAH, Madrid) Expedition to Deir el-Bahari and Asasif – in three campaigns (Fifth Season 2020, Study Season 2021, Sixth Season 2021). After the abrupt interruption of the Fifth Season due to the outbreak of the SARS-COVID 19 pandemic, the team organized a (summer) Study Season (Summer 2021), mainly to complete the analysis and documentation of required materials, and the Sixth Season (Fall 2021), where the focus stood on: i) the excavation of the courtyards of Henenu (TT 313) and Ipi (TT 315); ii) the excavation of the inner sections of TT 313 and E1; iii) the epigraphic analysis of hundreds of relief blocks retrieved from TT 313; iv) the implementation of new conservation protocols for the findings as well as the analysis of the conservation conditions and problems in Dagi’s tomb (TT 103); and v) the detailed analysis of textiles, ceramics, and human remains from TT 315.

Circa 100 BCE-350 CE, in today’s Sudan, the Kushite people of the Meroitic kingdom assembled long strands of cotton threads to create lattice works of elaborate design at the bottom of clothing and furnishing textiles. These openwork borders concluded the weave of large fabrics woven on the warp-weighted loom. Their ubiquity in the textile corpus of the Meroitic period makes these openworks a classic fixture of Meroitic weaving practices, reflected through iconography in other media as well. In 1984 and 1998, the renowned Nubian textiles experts Elisabeth Crowfoot and Nettie K. Adams studied the Meroitic openwork technique developed at Qasr Ibrim and compared it with other openworks from the Bronze Age site of Kerma (Crowfoot 1984, Adams 1998). Highlighting their common decorative vocabulary, the authors proposed to see the two techniques as different manifestations of the same craft tradition. Twenty years later, the present authors reexamined this hypothesis using an interdisciplinary approach based on the meeting of textile studies with experimental archaeology. Bringing heads and hands together, this project and the present article provided the opportunity to reconstruct and understand the manufacture and history of this remarkable technique.

This website is intended to function as an online archive of all the documentation available about a single Nubian burial – 350/II – excavated in 1963 by the Scandinavian Joint expedition. This specific grave was located at Debeira, in Lower Nubia, on a site labelled Neg ‘Iryan (co-ordinates 937.730/657.350). It is dated to the Late Antique period, to the so-called Post-Meroitic period, c. 400-600 C.E. Nowadays, the whole region of Lower Nubia between Wadi Halfa (Sudan) and Aswan (Egypt) is covered by the waters of Lake Nasser, and the site – as well as its many neighbors – has disappeared. The material presented here has been acquired by the author between 2018 and 2020, primarily during a research stay at the Gustavianum museum, University of Uppsala (Sweden), which house most of the archives pertaining to the expedition as well as a large part of the objects discovered. It was then completed by research in the SJE publications and by correspondence with the archaeological museum of the University of Stavanger (Norway). The several textiles found in the grave were our first focus, and they all received a detailed analysis, but we also tried to present them as integrative parts of the burial. The website is based on a group of items – object records, archive documents, etc. – organized according to their nature in Collections: Excavation archives, Artifacts, Scientific analyses, SJE publications, and Photographs. Items can be browsed by Collection or by Exhibitions, as several items have been grouped according to a specific narrative. Each thematic Exhibition presents the items individually as well as introduce the user to the topic: Past & Present of SJE350/II, The burial, Textile archaeology.

This article focusses on a loincloth found in situ on the skeleton on an Early Medieval male buried on the Nubian island of Sai, in Northern Sudan, dated to the 7th-9th centuries C.E. This loincloth differs from most of the contemporary textile production, as it was woven into shape in a triangular form and was probably using threads made of dromedary wool. Exhibiting several phases of repair and reuse until its internment with the deceased, this garment illustrates the textile know-hows and clothing practices of the ancient Nubians, as well as the cultural role of textiles during the funerary body rituals.

Since Pliny the Elder described the “wool-bearing trees” of Aethiopia in his Natural History, the cultivation of cotton has been a well-known aspect of the textile production of ancient Sudan. It was confirmed during the first decades of Sudanese archaeology by the discovery of many cotton textiles found in Meroe and Lower Nubia, and more recently completed by several archaeobotanical studies conducted in the same regions. The aim of this article is to survey the whole span of data pertaining to cotton in ancient Sudan, collecting information from different sources and chronological periods, so as to trace the evolution of cotton production from the Meroitic to the medieval times. New discoveries have led to a regain of interest for textile research in this part of the world, which will help us contextualize cotton cultivation within the wider framework of clothing and social display, as well as textile craft and the organization of the economy. This multi-disciplinary approach will highlight the important role of Sudan and Nubia in the development of cotton production and exchange in the ancient world.

The kingdom of Meroe (300 BCE – 350 CE) developed a truly unique textile tradition, represented by hundreds of preserved fabrics, tools and iconographic representations. Together, this vast body of historical data provides a great opportunity to study the patterns of textile production and consumption in the Meroitic society. This paper will first focus on restoring the textile implements to their archaeological locations in order to identify the different contexts and scales of textile manufacturing, primarily spinning and weaving. Far from homogenous, the Meroitic textile industry reflected the social complexity and the ethnic diversity of the kingdom. The paper’s second part will thus relate the settlement data on textile production to the finished products – fabrics and clothing – discovered in graves and depicted on reliefs and statues, thereby linking the textiles to the individuals using them. The role of the administrative and religious elite will particularly be discussed, both as commissioners and consumers of specific textile goods, as well as official relays in a state-controlled industry.

Late Antic Nubia (1st-6th centuries CE) experienced deep mutations which transformed the region from a province of the Meroitic Empire to an independent kingdom, Postmeroitic then Medieval and Christian. The ways and means of such an important cultural transformation are still scarcely understood by archaeologists and historians. By deciphering the evolutions of costume at Djebel Adda, this article offers new perspectives based on material culture to the study of this transition period. Because clothing shapes so much of the individual and his or her relations within society, conducting an archaeology of clothing at Djebel Adda gives us the opportunity to understand the active construction and negotiation of Nubian cultural identities.