White Linen: On a Sociocultural Network of Dependency in Pharaonic Egypt

Frank Förster & Ludwig Morenz
BCDSS Investigator & BCDSS Principal Investigator

For thousands of years, the color “white” was associated with the notion of purity in the Nile Valley, elevating it above the colorful and dirty everyday life. This symbolically charged purity played a major role in the broad field of the sacred in the Pharaonic Era and, not least, the cult of the gods. At the same time, this white purity required effort, suited certain ways of life, and thus implied a high social status.

White Clothing: Status and Symbolism

In Pharaonic Egypt, white linen was a product and indicator of high culture and belonged to the typical cultural inventory of elite status. Owning high-quality textiles corresponded to the consumption of meat or wine as culinary luxury goods.[1] Mixing aspects of aesthetics with status, clothing made from white linen was thus worn by the top elites (fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Statues of Rahotep and Nofret, early 4th dynasty, c. 2600 BC, Egyptian Museum Cairo, CG 3 and 4 (photo: Djehouty, 2016, license: CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en).

Correspondingly, bleached white linen was also considered a basic element of (otherworldly) care in the culture of funerals – i.e., the world of tombs and thus our main archaeological source for the culture of Ancient Egypt. It is therefore mentioned in the offering formulas documented thousands of times in Hieroglyphic inscriptions or shown in the offering lists.[2]

Since the early third and even the fourth millennium BC, the fabric quality was also differentiated in the language according to thread density. With this in mind, the word sjA – “power of recognition” – was written with the hieroglyph “Strips of Line” ( , sign list p 32), and the technological capital necessary for fabric production was likely considered high-tech and correspondingly prestigious and sought-after in the fourth millennium BC, from which the oldest known depiction of a (horizontal) loom also originates (fig. 2)[3]. The hieroglyph thus articulates, insofar as it represents “power of recognition” metaphorically, the high social appreciation of fabric technology.

Fig. 2: Oldest known depiction of a horizontal loom on a prehistoric painted clay bowl from Egypt, ca. 3600 BC, London, Petrie Museum UC 9547 (Badari, tomb 3802) (photo: Petrie Museum, University College London, n. d.).

In contrast to the textile production of other ancient cultures, thanks to Egypt’s dry climate, numerous textiles have been preserved in the tombs of the nobility in the Nile Valley, which are today spread across many museums around the world. The Egyptian Museum at the University of Bonn also has several linen fabrics of various sizes, colors, and qualities from the Pharaonic Era, which attest to the high standard of the art of weaving on the Nile, but still await more detailed scientific treatment (fig. 3 + 4).

Fig. 3: Linen cloth with fringed border (65.5 x 57.5 cm), Egyptian Museum Bonn BoSAe 3007, donated by Annemarie Müller-Feldmann, provenance and date unclear (photo: V. Lannert, 2024).

Fig. 4a – d: Large linen cloth (ca. 270 x 105 cm), Egyptian Museum Bonn BoSAe 3154, donated by Annemarie Müller-Feldmann, origin and dating unclear (photo: P. Linscheid, 2021).

Fig. 4a – d: Large linen cloth (ca. 270 x 105 cm), Egyptian Museum Bonn BoSAe 3154, donated by Annemarie Müller-Feldmann, origin and dating unclear (photo: P. Linscheid, 2021).

Alfred Wiedemann (1856–1936), the founder of Egyptology in Bonn (fig. 5), who established the first systematic collection of Aegyptiaca there in the Museum of Academic Art of Classical Archaeology, also contributed extensive fabric samples from his private collection, although these were apparently completely burned during a bombing on Bonn on October 18, 1944. He also gave similar sets of Pharaonic fabric samples, including high-quality white linen fabrics and bindings from royal mummies, to the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels and the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden around 1898, where they were fortunately preserved (fig. 6).[4]

Fig. 5: Alfred Wiedemann (1856–1936), founder of Egyptology in Bonn, in 1885 (photo: Griffith Institute/Oxford, n. d.).

Fig. 6: Some of the fabric samples of shrouds and mummy bandages collected by Alfred Wiedemann and donated to the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels around 1898, including particularly high-quality royal linen fabrics (photos: V. van Kersen, n. d.).

Social Organization of Weaving in the Pharaonic Nile Valley

Weaving was a central sector of handicrafts in Pharaonic Egypt and was therefore often depicted in the scenes of daily life in elite tombs, mostly on tomb walls (fig. 7 – 9).[5] The richness of detail shown in a painted wooden model of a weaving mill along with a spinning mill, which was found in a tomb from the early Middle Kingdom (around 2000 BC) in Upper Egyptian Thebes (fig. 10) is particularly impressive.[6] Here we see several women spinning and stretching out threads and weaving on simple weaving looms that lie on the floor. Only during the New Kingdom (approx. 1550–1070 BC) did the technically advanced vertical loom with a vertical frame and corresponding weaving beams (fig. 9) appear alongside this horizontal type, although without completely replacing it.

Fig. 7: Depictions of women weavers in the tomb of Khnumhotep III in Beni Hasan, Middle Kingdom, 12th Dynasty, c. 1860 BC (facsimile by N. de Garis Davies, 1931, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, n. d.). The women on the right are spinning linen threads, while the two women on the left are weaving cloth on a horizontal loom, i.e., lying on the floor (depicted from above; cf. fig. 10); in the center is a well-built male overseer.

Both women and men were employed in the weaving mill, at least from the Middle Kingdom onward (cf. fig. 7 – 10).[7] They were partly organized in workhouses, which means that it is not always easy – and often virtually impossible – for us distant observers to identify the distinction between (more or less) voluntary and involuntary labor.

Fig. 8 + 9: Depictions of various weaving processes in the tomb of Djehutinefer in Thebes West (TT 104), New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, c. 1400 BC: the women on the left are spinning, while the three men on the right are working at the vertical loom, which, unlike the horizontal loom, is not documented before the New Kingdom (c. 1550‒1070 BC) (Vogelsang-Eastwood 2000: figs. 11.4b, 11.8; Cambridge University Press, Licence, 98197, 2024).

Fig. 10: Painted wooden model of a weaving workshop from the tomb of Meketre in Thebes West (TT 280) with two horizontal looms lying on the floor, Middle Kingdom, 11th Dynasty, c. 2000 BC (Egyptian Museum Cairo, JE 46723; now in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, Cairo) (photo: M. Attia, n. d.).

This topic also found its way into belles-lettres (Egyptian: mdw nfrw). Text and textile production are not directly connected but closely associated in a lamenting verse likely from the late Middle Kingdom entitled Admonitions:[8]

“The female musicians (xntj.wt) of the weaving looms in the workshops:
What they sing for (the goddess) Meret are songs of sorrow,
(and) [they] tell [complaints (or similar) at] the millstone” (4, 12–13).

Although xntj.wt means “female musicians” at the initial lexical level, it is also reminiscent of the word xnr.wt, which is almost identical in its consonant structure and means “person obliged to work”. In the following verse, the weavers (mr.t), who are not explicitly mentioned here, also play a role in an implicit play on words with the goddess of song Meret[9]. The analogy between the loom with its threads and the harp with its many strings should also be noted here with regard to the poetic image painted. The core expression for the socio-historical background is the term xnr.t wr.t, which, although difficult for us distant observers to determine more precisely in view of the random nature of records being preserved, it can be paraphrased in terms of the European modern era as “large workhouse”. The dense poetry of this short verse plays with the interweaving of entertaining music against the background of arduous textile production and compulsory labor.

Semites as Slave Laborers on the Nile or Free Workers, or Something In-Between? Case Study of a Weaving Tool From the Second Millennium BC From Illahun With an Alefbetic Owner Inscription

From some Hieratic administrative texts from the Egyptian culture, such as the Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446 from the late Middle Kingdom[10], we know that not only Egyptians but also Semites worked in the weaving mill in the Nile Valley. In fact, the question is how strong the aspect of forced labor was. This question requires a more detailed discussion, which will result in greater differentiation.

What is known as a heddle jack[11]in the British Museum in London (Inv. No. EA70881) – i.e., a weaving tool for guiding strands – with an Alefbetic owner inscription (fig. 11; for its functionality see fig. 12) speaks in favor of a certain social independence and cultural agency. It comes from the workers’ village at the royal pyramid of El Lahun.[12] It is particularly noteworthy in terms of written and cultural history due to the owner inscription. This is one of the earliest ever Alefbetic inscriptions and one of the few known from the Nile Valley in the second millennium BC.[13] It was possible to identify the material as cedar wood, which indicates that this tool was brought from the Levant region to Egyptian El Lahun.

Fig. 11a + b: Heddle jack from Illahun, British Museum London, EA70881 with Alefbetic owner’s inscription (photo: D. Sabel, n. d.).

Fig. 11c: Heddle jack from Illahun, British Museum London, EA70881 with Alefbetic owner’s inscription (drawing: D. Sabel, n. d.; cf. cf. also Gallorini 2009, 118-119, fig. 4).

Large, clearly distinct characters are engraved one after the other in the upper area of the cedar of the heddle jack. This dense sequence of four or five characters would be strange for simple craftsman’s marks.[14] An interpretation as text, and specifically early Alefbetic text, is therefore likely. The letters are very large and appear to be written somewhat awkwardly. We can read the characters from right to left as personal names AH-al – “The brother is high” (or similar.).[15] In any case, the writing and, in particular the Canaanite Alef-Bet text, which was foreign to the Nile Valley with its major Hieratic and Hieroglyphic text tradition, demonstrates the noteworthy cultural autonomy of the Semitic tool owner. We thus see a remarkably concrete mosaic of social and economic history in the Nile Valley that is also interesting from a socio-historical perspective, yet our overall image of the social organization of the weaving mill (and the possible dependencies or independence of its actors) over three thousand years of Pharaonic history is highly fragmented.

Fig. 12: Model and functioning of a horizontal Middle Kingdom loom lying on the ground (after Winlock 1922, 73, fig. 2, bottom). The heddle jacks arranged in pairs (see Fig. 11) are used to guide the heddles (drawing: A. Schüssler, 2024).

Endnotes

[1] Cf. Morenz & Förster 2024.

[2] Barta 1963; more specifically for the Old Kingdom: Scheele-Schweitzer 2005.

[3] Brunton & Caton-Thompson 1928: 51, pl. XXXVIII, F70k. For further relevant finds from the Predynastic Period (spinning bowls from Tell el-Farkha in the Nile Delta), see also Mączyńska 2012.

[4] Förster 2020, 31; for Wiedemann as a collector and his academic network at the time, see also Förster 2019. For the flourishing trade in mummy textiles (including from royal mummies from the famous cache of Deir el-Bahari, TT320) at the end of the 19th century, in which academics such as Wiedemann, but especially Émile Brugsch, were also involved, see van Kersen 2021. Cf. also Riggs 2014 and St Clair 2019, 35–54 (chapter “Dead Men’s Shrouds: Wrapping and Unwrapping Egyptian Mummies”).

[5] Recent overviews of the various working processes, organizational units, and textile products incl. their quality spectrum in Vogelsang-Eastwood 1992; 1993; 2000; 2001. Cf. also D’Amicone 1986; Hagemann 1986; Kemp & Vogelsang-Eastwood 2001 and, more generally on the history of fabric production, the entertaining presentation “The Golden Thread. How fabric changed history” by K.St Clair (2019). For the development of specific tools for textile manufacture between the Levant and Egypt, see Spinazzi-Lucchesi 2018.

[6] Winlock 1955, 29–33, pls. 25–27, 66–67 (The spinning and weaving shop, Model H).

[7] Cf. Roehrig 1996, 19–24.

[8] Enmarch 2008.

[9] Guglielmi 1991.

[10] Hayes 1955.

[11] Cf. Winlock 1922; Spinazzi-Lucchesi 2018, 87. The English tool name itself bears very obvious colonial connotations…

[12] https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA70881 (last accessed: 12.08.2024); cf. Gallorini 2009, 118–119, Fig. 4; Morenz 2019, 221, Fig. 156.

[13] Morenz 2019. A more precise dating remains difficult and, for the time being, we must be satisfied with a time period from the Middle to the New Kingdom (approx. 2000–1070 BC).

[14] Cf. Haring & Kaper 2009.

[15] If a taw should actually be present as the fifth large letter, we can read AH-atl– “The brother is ruler”. There are also two small letters in this inscription, which repeat the two large letters ‘lamed’ and ‘he’; discussion in Morenz 2019, 221, with Fig. 156.

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