See the World’s Oldest Dress

A 5,000-year-old Egyptian garment provides a glimpse into the fashions of yester-yester-yesteryear.

By Traci Watson
PUBLISHED THU FEB 18

Photograph courtesy Petrie Museum
Of Egyptian Archaeology,
University College London

There’s vintage, and then there’s vintage.

New tests show that a linen dress found in an Egyptian tomb dates back more than 5,000 years, making it the oldest woven garment yet found. Beautifully stitched and pleated, it signals the complexity and wealth of the ancient society that produced it.

The garment, known as the Tarkhan dress, is a find of surpassing rarity. Few pieces of early clothing, which was made from plant fibers or animal skins, escaped disintegration. Textiles recovered from archaeological sites are generally no older than 2,000 years, says Alice Stevenson, curator of London’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and an author of a new study in the journal Antiquity about the dress’s age.

A handful of garments of similar age have survived to the present day, but those were simply wrapped or draped around the body. The Tarkhan dress, on the other hand, is ancient haute couture. With its tailored sleeves, V-neck, and narrow pleats, it would look perfectly at home in a modern department store.

Rare find of Polish scientists in Egypt

The gift of the father of the legendary Cleopatra VII for an Egyptian temple, in the form of a linen cloth, has been discovered by Polish archaeologists during excavations in Western Thebes (modern Luxor) in Egypt.

 

 

Photocredit: A. Ćwiek

The discovery was made during the excavation of a several meters deep shaft of a tomb of a dignitary from the Middle Kingdom (c. 2000 BC) in the necropolis Sheikh Abd el-Qurna. In the sixth century, the location was adapted by hermits - Christian monks - for housing purposes.
 
"Probably the monks living in the hermitage, who were bringing everything they could use from the surrounding area, found the canvas in the ruins of a nearby temple and took it with a practical use in mind. We were lucky to discover this unique object" - explained Andrzej Ćwiek, Deputy Head of Mission, an employee of Adam Mickiewicz University and the Archaeological Museum in Poznań. The excavations were conducted under the concessions obtained by the Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of Warsaw.
 
The unique find is a fragment of linen with a hieroglyphic text painted with ink. There are two columns of cartouches, ornamental borders around the name of the Pharaoh, Ptolemy XII Auletes (80-51 BC) - the father of the famous Cleopatra VII. In the third column, an ancient scribe put the name of the goddess Isis and epithets.
 
"Not all signs are readable, but the name Ptolmys (Ptolemy) can be seen as clearly an on the Rosetta Stone, the monument, which allowed Jean François Champollion to read hieroglyphic script" - explained Dr. Ćwiek.