Is that what people wore back then?

After her daily bath in fresh milk, the beauty Cleopatra rises. Immediately, hordes of servants rush in to drape her in gleaming white robes adorned with gold ornaments. Meanwhile, outside, her slaves work, wearing drab, gray, half-torn rags on their bodies. However, this representation has little to do with the everyday life of the people of that time, knows the Kassel ancient historian PD Dr. Kerstin Droß-Krüpe. "For one thing, Cleopatra was the top of the pyramid. So it does not reflect the daily life of the population. In contrast to Cleopatra, the average woman of the time had a much more limited closet. The standard was the tunic, which usually reached to the knees or ankles, and the coat. Both were available in different qualities and materials, depending on the purse. For example, made of wool, linen or high-quality silk. The saying "Clothes make the man" also applied in Egypt at that time. The toga was reserved for men who had Roman citizenship and was thus a visible sign of political privilege. It was worn over the tunic, was oval-shaped and consisted of about nine square meters of fabric.

Unlike today, at that time every garment was made to measure, commissioned by the customer. The product was usually made in one piece on the loom - cut pieces were rather rare. Another peculiarity was that the required material had to be procured by the customer himself. The most popular colors were reds and yellows, although there was a wide range of colors. They were obtained from vegetable and animal raw materials. Purple, for example, was obtained from the pituitary gland of a sea snail and was very valuable. Saffron yielded yellow, walnut shells brown, and kermes lice red. Often, however, the clothing was plain white. This may have been because linen in particular was difficult to dye. Since the production of a tunic took on average between 18 and 20 days, it was accordingly valuable. A tunic could be worth 160 drachmas. Enough money to support a family of six for two months. For this reason, women had their dowries, which almost always included clothing, confirmed in writing. In the event of divorce, which was not uncommon, there was thus the possibility of recovering one's possessions.

These documents are also of great value to scholars today. Droß-Krüpe says that, among other things, dowry agreements from the time when Egypt was a province of the Roman Empire (30 B.C. - A.D. 642) are an important source for researching the clothing of that time. After all, women's wardrobe is described in detail. "The texts from Egypt provide fascinating insights into the everyday world of the people. Thousands of letters, receipts, entries and contracts have been preserved on papyrus - documents from very different strata of the population," confirms Droß-Krüpe. Despite the enormous amount of sources, however, historians encounter challenges here as well. "Occasionally, items of clothing are named that are unknown to us today, and their appearance is also not described in detail," says Droß-Krüpe. "Sometimes you can draw tentative conclusions from the word itself - but most of the time you're in the dark. In the end, it's often a weighing of plausibilities. What is the meaning of the root word, in what context does it occur, are inferences possible from details in the contexts, and are there figurative representations with which this can be reconciled." One example is the word "episkarsia," which is mentioned in a dowry contract, among other things. Suggested translations abound, so it is unclear what it is supposed to be. If other sources are considered in which the term also occurs, clothing, bedding or other garments are episkarsioi. So it has something to do with the nature of a garment. In other sources that have nothing to do with clothing, the term describes rectangular things. Among other things, a road system or the attachment of ship planks. From this, one could conclude that the textiles are also something rectangular - possibly a check pattern. It seems obvious to simply look at pictures to determine the shape and color of everyday clothing. One possibility for this would be mummy portraits. These would be the image of a dead person attached to his or her mummy. However, there are two problems here: First, these images were made more for the elites. Secondly, the deceased always wore festive clothing. Thus, ideal images are shown, which did not correspond to everyday life. Sometimes, however, these images show that fashion trends always recur. On a shroud the image of a middle-aged woman is shown. She is wearing a yellowish tunic with a white edging with a red serrated pattern visible at the neck slit," describes Droß-Krüpe. "In addition, the lady wears red socks and sandals. If you've ever wondered who started this combination - now you know the answer."

Text Dennis Müller