Materials used to make Textiles in Ancient Egypt

According to scenes decorating the walls of tombs, Ancient Egypt was well known for the
production of linen, from which the majority of ancient Egyptian textiles were made.
Linen is made from flax plants, which take about three months to mature. The plant is a slender
annual with delicate blue flowers. When the flowers have died, the seed heads appear and the
plants are ready to be harvested. Bundles of flax stems were grasped and pulled, rather than cut,
out of the ground. After the plants had dried, the seed heads were removed, either by rippling,
which is removing by hand, or by combing with a long, toothed board, called the rippling comb.
Exposure to water or to dew and sunlight loosened the fibers within the plant stems, in a process
known as "retting." After washing, drying, beating, and combing, the fibers were ready for
spinning.
Flax was not the only textile fiber in use. Textiles have also been found that were made from
sheep's wool, goat hair, palm fibers, grass, and reeds.
Several examples of goat-hair textiles were excavated at the mid-fourteenth century BC
workmen's village at Tell el-Amarna. Goat-hair textiles have also been excavated at other ancient
sites.
Animal fibers did not have the same importance for making cloth because the wool of that time
was not suitable for spinning. The Ancient Egyptians also believed that wool was unclean and
used it only as outer garments that were left outside temples.
Palm fiber is made from the bark of various types of palm trees and was used to make ropes
since ancient times. Palm fiber textiles are not commonly found, but at Tell el-Amarna one piece
of fabric had a series of palm-fiber loops woven into it. Grass and reeds were typically used for
matting. It is possible that they were also used for textiles, although this is not certain.

Weaving Textiles in Ancient Egypt

Because of the dry conditions of the tombs, thousands of pieces of ancient textiles have survived
in Egypt. Information about the processes and methods of making textiles in Pharaonic Egypt
can be obtained both from the samples of cloth that have been found and from depictions of the
various stages of textile production from the sowing of the flax seed to the weaving of the
material. Once fibers were removed from the plant or animal, they were spun and then woven
into a textile. To produce long, useful threads, flax fibers were spun, or twisted together. This
produced a long, cohesive thread that was slightly elastic. The technique of spinning in Ancient
Egypt is seen as two distinct but related processes.
In the first stage, an initial loose twist was given to the flax fibers. In the second stage, the actual
spinning of the fibers occurred to produce the thread. The spinning had three distinct stages: the
drawing-out of the fibers, the twisting of the fibers, and the winding of the thread.

Once a spindle was set in motion, the spinner pulled or drew out a few fibers at a time from a
mass. As the spindle turned the fibers, twist, or spin, was added. When there was sufficient
twisted thread, the spindle was stopped and the thread was wound onto the spindle shaft. The
most common form of spinning equipment used in Ancient Egypt was the hand spindle. It was
made of a stick, which is called the shaft or spindle, with a weight, called the whorl.
The whorl acted like a flywheel, keeping the momentum of the spin regulated for speed and
uniformity of motion. After the flax fibers were spun into a thread or yarn, they were ready to be
woven into cloth. Weaving is the process of interlacing two or more sets of threads according to a
predefined direction to produce all or part of a textile.
The first task was to remove the thread from the spindle and to warp the loom, which involves
placing the warp threads, or vertical threads, in position on the loom with the threads pulled
tight. Then the actual weaving commences. In Ancient Egypt, the range of weave forms, or
patterns, seems to be limited to the types of weaves called tabby, basket, tapestry, and warppattern. The most common weave from Ancient Egypt is the simple, or balanced, tabby weave,
with an equal number of warp and weft, or horizontal, threads. There are warp-faced tabby
weaves, and weft-faced tabby weaves. A faced tabby weave has more threads in one direction
than the other. Thus a warp-faced tabby has more warp than weft threads per centimeter or inch.

Materials used for Textiles in the Ptolemaic Period

During the Ptolemaic period, wool rose in importance, second to linen, and stayed there until the
Coptic era. The masses wore clothes made of linen, wool, and then silk to a smaller degree. Silk
has been used by humans since ancient times, but Egypt was introduced to silk through trade
during the Ptolemaic period, where it became the most important good in Alexandria.
During the Roman era, silk was woven locally in Egypt, although under the tight control of
Roman emperors. Their decrees of AD 369, 406, and 424 limited the silk industry to the needs of
the emperor's palace. The decree of AD 438 prohibited weaving silk in Alexandria.The Justinian
Codes declared that purple silk was an imperial fabric, to be manufactured only in imperial
works. The reason behind these restrictions was probably the scarcity and high cost of raw silk. It
might also be a result of the tense political relationship between the Byzantine Empire and Persia
in addition to the fact that Christian clergymen considered silk inappropriate for men to wear.

Wool and Cotton Production in Islamic Egypt

Ancient Egyptians believed wool was unclean, and therefore rarely used it, but in the Islamic
period, wool was considered the second most important raw material for making fabric after
linen. Wool production flourished in Middle and Upper Egypt. Middle Egypt was famous for
wool products because of the large number of sheep raised by the Arab tribes that settled there

during the fifth century AH (eleventh century AD).

Tama was famous for its light wool. The cities of Al-Qais were well known for making wool
clothes, and so were El Bahnasa, Akhmim, and Asiut. Al-Qais was famous for its quality wool
that was used in undyed golden Maraz. Caliph Mu'awiya, founder of the Umayyad dynasty, was
said to wear only this kind of wool in winter.
Asiut was also known for wool production. Its Armenian-looking purple wool was of great
popularity at the time, and was called Egyptian Wool. Wool workshops in these cities were
committed to producing quantities of wool clothes to be paid for by tribute.
Cotton production, however, was very limited during the Wallah, or early Islamic, age. The
Wallah age was the Islamic period when Egypt was ruled by governors who were appointed by
caliphs who lived in Mecca, or Damascus, or Baghdad.
Egyptian weavers might have mixed cotton with linen and wool. Large cotton warehouses dating
back to the second century AH (eighth century AD) were found in Fustat. However, cotton was
not mentioned in papyrus records, nor are there any cotton clothes going back before the
Mamluk era.

Dyeing of Ancient Egyptian Textiles

The use of dyed threads or dyed cloth can tentatively be traced back to the First Dynasty, to a
brownish piece of linen found at Tarkhan. Dyed cloth can be more confidently assigned to the
late Third or early Fourth Dynasty, based on a red cloth fragment from the site of Meidum. Not
until the New Kingdom, however, was cloth frequently woven with colored threads.
Ancient Egyptian dyeing materials can be divided into two basic types: ocher and plant dyes.
Ocher is earth that consists of hydrated oxide of iron, or rust, mixed into clay. With heat, yellow
iron oxide can turn into red iron oxide and can be used to create yellow, yellow-brown, and red
colors. The dyeing of linen with iron oxide has a long tradition in Egypt, which may date back to
the Early Dynastic period with the Tarkhan textile. Linen that was colored red from iron oxide
dye was also found at various later sites, including the workmen's village at Tell el-Amarna.
Several different methods of coloring cloth were used in the Dynastic period. The oldest method
is "smearing," in which the color is spread onto the cloth, possibly with the aid of clay, mud, or
honey. The Egyptians also carried out a process called double dyeing, in which fibers, threads, or
cloth were first dyed one color and then dyed again with a different color to obtain a third
color. Purple, for example is made from red and blue, while green is made using yellow and blue.
The Egyptians usually dyed either spun threads or woven cloth.

In woven cloth, white areas can sometimes be seen beneath the place where a warp thread, or
vertical thread, passes over a weft or horizontal thread. Bleaching was also a decorative
technique because the wearing of white garments was regarded by Egyptians as an indication of
social status and, perhaps, as a sign of cleanliness.

Decoration of Ancient Egyptian Clothing

Many believe the ancient Egyptians wore plain garments, or clothing. Garments were
often used as a backdrop for elaborate jewelry, but they also played a complementary
role.
Beads, rosettes, and sequins were used to enhance the appearance of a garment. A rosette
is an ornament or badge made of ribbon or silk that is pleated or gathered to resemble a
rose. Beads, particularly in the form of jewelry, were used throughout Egyptian culture
from prehistoric times onward, but occasionally they have been found either sewn onto
cloth or, more rarely, actually woven into the material. In the early medieval period,
embroidery became popular although only a few fragments dating to the Dynastic period
have been found.
Another technique, which appears in the New Kingdom and is normally associated with
royal clothing, is appliqu. Appliqu is the method of fastening a decoration to a larger
piece of fabric. One forms of appliqu was the use of different types of braid to decorate
objects, usually garments. Sometimes the braid had small fringes along its edges, in
which case the braid was placed along the outer edge of a piece of cloth. When there
were no fringes, it was usually either sewn across the cloth or down the edges. Garments
were also decorated with pleats, and the oldest examples seem to be horizontally pleated
dresses dating to the Old Kingdom.
One of the most elaborate examples found in the Egyptian Museum has three different
types of pleating. It is decorated with a simple set of pleats a few centimeters apart; a
series of pleats that touch each other closely; and a section of herringbone pleating in
which vertical lines were pleated and then, at regular intervals, horizontal lines were
pleated to create wide bands with a chevron, or inverted V-shaped pattern.
Several surviving linen textiles dating from the New Kingdom onward were also painted
with designs of varying degrees of complexity.

Coptic Tapestry
The Arabs gave Egyptian tapestry the name "Kapati," based on the name "Copt."
Tapestry is considered one of the oldest decorated fabrics and the first attempt to make
decorations of two or more colors. Tapestry is one of the simplest methods of making
decorated fabrics and was made of linen and wool. The Copts of Egypt were famous for
making tapestry.
Al-Maqrizi, a historian, mentioned in his "Al-Khotat wal Aathar," that Cyrus, the ruler of
Egypt, gave Prophet Mohammad a present of 20 rolls of tapestry and covered the Kaaba with
the same fabric. The Kaaba is the central cubic stone structure within the Great Mosque in
Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which is covered by a cloth.
The world began to demand that type of fabric, which was exported to many Mediterranean
countries. It lost importance in Egypt compared to other methods of creating fabric, but
reappeared in the seventeenth century in France during the time of King Louis the Fourteenth
under a new name, "Gobelin." There was also a similar fabric called "Aubusson", named
after a city in France. The making of tapestry was not limited to Egypt, but spread to most
countries in the Middle East. Persia and Turkey began producing tapestry as early as the
sixteenth century AD, about the same time it was produced in Europe under other names.
The Coptic Church priests wore a Patrashil, which is a vest of white linen decorated with
religious drawings on the chest. It was worn over the priest's robes, which were made mostly
of white linen with stripes of plant decorations. The robes were loose, a reference to the
priest's patience, and long to cover the whole body. It is rare to find silk tapestry from this
period because of the scarcity and high cost of silk. It also was not considered an appropriate
fabric for men.