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Dressed: The History of Fashion
Dress Like an Egyptian, an interview with Dr. Colleen Darnell (Dressed Classic)
00:45:22
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- [00:00]
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- [00:55]
Dressed Podcast Host
Dressed Listeners, please enjoy this episode from the Dressed Archive of over 500 plus shows. You have been very patient with us and we assure you Dressed will be back with all new content in the form of season eight. Can you believe it? In March of 2025 we have so many wonderful things up our sleeves that we cannot wait to share with you. But until then, please consider heading to dressedhistory.com where you will find information regarding our upcoming fashion history tours of Paris and New York, which are both open for registration and selling fast. And while you are there, also consider signing up for our upcoming online course offerings, which include what Women Wore to the Revolution coming your way in May. More from Dressed coming your way very soon.
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Cassidy
Welcome. Today's episode is very exciting because April we have the distinctive pleasure of welcoming Dr. Colleen Darnell to the show. Colleen is an Egyptologist, which is not a job title you hear every day. She is the author of six books and dozens of articles about ancient Egypt on topics that include military history, literature, religion and Egyptian revival activities. Her book Imagining the Historical Fiction in New Kingdom Egypt provided the first analysis of a genre of quote unquote historical fiction written in Ancient Egypt between circa 1275 and 1100 BCE.
- [02:36]
Co-Host
And Dr. Darnell has also led archaeological expeditions in Egypt and curated museum exhibitions including Echoes of Conjuring the Land of the Pharaohs and Cassidy, and discovered you on Instagram, where you have two accounts, the first of which is Hedaily Hieroglyph, where she shares her extensive knowledge on ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. And the second, Instagram, I think is going to be quite intriguing to any of our listeners. Please follow Colleen at vintagegyptologist Absolutely, because this documents her scholastic adventures in high style. And we mean high style because Colleen and her husband John Darnell, they dress exclusively in vintage clothing with a particular focus on the 1920s.
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Cassidy
And not only does Colleen exclusively wear vintage in her everyday life, she even can be found wearing it while excavating Egyptian tombs. This is a commitment we can all appreciate. Undressed. Colleen, we are thrilled to have you with us today. Thank you so much.
- [03:41]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
Thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor.
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Cassidy
Yeah. We are very excited because Egypt is not a subject we have touched on this season of dress. And I admit, other than the general basics, this is not a subject that I know that much about other than what Hollywood has romanticized for me since I was a small child in the Mummy series. So I'm thrilled to get to explore this topic with you today. And let's be honest, this is only going to be a small glimpse. When we say ancient Egypt, we are talking about a time span of over 3.
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
It's a lot of dresses.
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Cassidy
Yes.
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Co-Host
But before we dig into this topic.
- [04:15]
Cassidy
Get it, because we love puns.
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Co-Host
Can you tell us a little bit about how you became an Egyptologist? What sparked your interest and your academic pursuits into studying ancient cultures? And you never know, this episode address might inspire a few budding Egyptologists themselves out there.
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
That would be really great. So I think for me, ancient Egypt was a complete passion since I was a small child. So I always wanted to be an Egyptologist, but it was really wonderful to be able to make a career out of it because that isn't always what happens in the field. So I studied at Yale University, received my PhD in Egyptology, and I've been teaching Egyptology and art history ever since. And then in the breaks typically in between semesters, going on archeological expeditions in Egypt.
- [05:07]
Cassidy
Oh, wow. And as we mentioned in the intro, you have a love for 1920s fashion. So much that is a main staple of your wardrobe. You are wearing a fabulous lace and pink silk ensemble today. Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to collect and wear vintage fashion? Thanks to Instagram, I have now become aware of this incredibly large international community of people, men and women, who live and breathe fashion history, such as yourself. It really is a lifestyle choice. So can you talk a little bit more about that?
- [05:37]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
Oh, of course. Vintage fashion for me is a very much a collaboration with my husband John, and we often coordinate our vintage and really love the act of shopping and assembling a wardrobe and then going out to events and even just a museum to put something on that has that connection with the past. And then you're looking at paintings or statues and you notice all These details of the clothing and you're wearing historical fashion. And so that's. I think, what's so intriguing about the connection between the academic study of history, particularly art history, and then dressing in vintage fashion is it really makes it all come alive. So that's a lot of fun. And out in the field a lot of times, joppers, cottons, linens, those are the most practical things to wear. In addition to pith helmets, because they're so light, they're designed to be in a really hot climate. And in the field, I tend to avoid the really old 1920s, 1930s, and do more of the later fashion with some mixed in. But no vintage is harmed during the course of archaeological expeditions.
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Cassidy
Can you talk a little bit about where you source and collect your vintage from? Is it all over?
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
It really is all over. So there's amazing vendors here in New York City. Wildfell Hall, Noble Vintage Clothier. They come to a lot of events, and so it's fun to see the clothes in person. I think that's so important, particularly when starting a vintage collection. Just go everywhere, look at it, get a sense of how it feels and fits. And visiting stores around and obviously Instagram and Etsy, the Internet in general, is such an amazing source.
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Co-Host
Yeah, I just had this revelation all of a sudden. So there's kind of a relationship between your hunt for the ancient and your hunt for your vintage. They probably fulfill that same interest. Oh, my God. Absolutely.
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
All about understanding how things work, understanding what a particular style was, what it meant. And so analyzing, I think, Is the dress 1926? Is the dress 1929? Is it 1932? You're looking for the same clues as trying to date a hieroglyphic inscription down to the label. That's what hieroglyphs are. They're labels off into scenes. I think the hunt for vintage is exactly that. It can be this academic and fun pursuit, because that's what I think studying hieroglyphs is.
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Co-Host
So the discovery of King Tut's nearly intact tomb in 1922, of course, as we all know, received international press coverage, and it caused a sensation. And people around the world were captivated by this, reading all the news every single day. Can you tell us a little bit more about this discovery? Why it was important to the field of Egyptology, but also the general public. Why was the general public so fascinated?
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
That's a really great question. And the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun is without a doubt, one of the most important archaeological discoveries ever made in Egypt. Because we learned so much about what would have been contained within a tomb. We could guess based on various paintings, decoration in the Valley of the Kings, but we couldn't get a sense of exactly how it all fit together. And although Tutankhamun's tomb might not have necessarily been representative, he had a fairly short reign in comparison to many of the famous kings of the New Kingdom. But it was all there, which was remarkable. And there's some really interesting religious texts even on his shrines that aren't attested in any other tomb. So that was key to our knowledge. And then because this is the age of mass media in the 1920s, it spreads like wildfire and catches on for everything from King Tut Lemons, as in advertising in the 1920s, to Jazz Age songs. But what I think even more fascinating about looking at Egyptomania in the 1920s is that it already starts prior to the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen. There's a surprising amount of Victorian and Edwardian Egyptomania not always as accurate. They're not really looking as much at the sources, although one can't say 1920s Egyptomania is always accurate either. And even Egyptomania icons like Grauman's Egyptian Theater was constructed in 1922 before the tomb was discovered in November. So it's almost this amazing coming together of different historical events where Egypt is very much part of the imagination. The discovery of Nefertiti's bust in 1912, the excavations at Amarna that already had really brought to the fore Egyptian iconography, interest in ancient Egypt. And then to have this spectacular gold mask and well preserved tomb in 1922 makes it explode, right?
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Cassidy
Yeah. And on the show we speak a lot to the role that fashion plays in reflecting the happenings of any given era. And we've spoken about how it proceeds in many ways and anticipates things. So that's perhaps not as surprising. And this discovery proves no exception. So it's not surprising that fashion responds immediately. And the Chaney Silk Company is just one example of a textile firm that sent a designer directly to Egypt immediately to study the artifacts in person. So the firm of Lefkowitz and Potofsky even went as far as to offer $100,000 to the excavation. So it's not long before the market's inundated in all things Egypt, from the mass produced scarf to the upper echelons of the Meija order haute couture. I would love to know if you have any of these pieces in your collection, and if so, can you speak to them a bit?
- [11:15]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
I do have several Egyptian revival pieces. Having studied Egyptomania, it's even more fun to collect it because you can see how it all fits in. So I have a couple pre1920s Egyptian revival pieces, brooches that incorporate scarabs and lotus motifs, which I really enjoy wearing. And then from the 1920s, probably my favorite piece is a black velvet opera coat with silver beads. With silver beads that are in the design of pseudo hieroglyphs. They don't actually say anything. Sphinxes and also Egyptian royal heads wearing the typical Nimi's headdress, just like we would see on Tutankhamun. Those pieces are really fun to incorporate. And it's interesting then how many gold and blue and red designs get labeled as Egyptian revival because it does evoke the past without being a direct copy. And I think some of those inspirational designs can be really interesting.
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Cassidy
Yeah. Versus the literal interpretations of them. Or the literal copying of the design onto a scarf.
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
Exactly. There's a lot of that, particularly mid century where it is the head of Nefertiti on an object. And that's really fun as well. But I like the subtle, more nuanced Egyptian revival.
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Co-Host
So there was a lot of press coverage, as we've mentioned about this, and a journalist for the New York Times under the headline Pharaonic styles set new fashions quoted a West End London dressmaker in a 1923 article saying, quote, every well dressed woman will be wearing evening gowns designed after ancient Egyptian models. Lord Carnavaran's discoveries in Egypt had a tremendous effect upon the styles. Tutankhamun, overcoats, suits, hats, along with ancient Egyptian lines with a touch of modern smartness. And then goes on to say Egyptian headdresses, scarabs, pearls have increased in demand. Practically all the fashionable jewelers are displaying ancient styles of jewelry and. Which is exactly what you just mentioned. And really, we could probably spend an entire podcast talking about only Egyptian revival fashions of the twenties and Egyptomania. But I think Cass and I also would love to touch back on the rich culture of dress inspired them in the first place in ancient Egypt. So I'm hoping that we can speak about this a bit further after a word from our sponsors.
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- [16:38]
Cassidy
Welcome back. Dress Detective hats on or dress detective cloches. For instance, we are about to take a giant leap from the 1920s all the way back to 3000 BCE. So let's start with the very basics, because it would appear to me that for over 3,000 years, there was one unchanging staple of Egyptian men and women's wardrobe, and that was linen. It would appear that linen and linen alone remained the foundation of Egyptian dress across the social strata for thousands of years. So can you speak to the cultural significance of this fabric to the history of Egyptian dress?
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
So you're absolutely right. Linen is the foundational material for ancient Egyptian garments. And we can push that date back to 5000 BCE, where we had the first piece of linen attested in an archeological context even further back, which is incredible. And then that remained the stable all the way through the Roman period. And cotton, which we obviously associate so strongly with Egypt today, was only introduced probably in the first century ce. So it's a relative late comer. And it's interesting as well that the Egyptians did have wool and woolen garments. They're clearly not nearly as significant as linen because most of the year it's pretty warm, so you wouldn't need wool. But in a desert environment, it can get quite cold at night. And a Greek historian who visited Egypt roughly 450 BCE said that the Egyptians considered wool impure. And we don't actually have confirmation of that. So there's this perception that the Egyptians intentionally avoided wool. That probably isn't true. On the flip side, priests do seem to have been intentionally clad only in white linen. So there might be a little kernel of truth. But it's so interesting, looking at 5,000 years of Egyptian history, that what is a commonly read source now might not be the best source in terms of looking at ancient Egyptian clothing traditions.
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Cassidy
And I'm curious, do they? Because you do associate white linen with Egyptians. Was there any sort of dyeing of that linen ever? Was that incorporated into the what they wore?
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
Most of the linens we have would have been white or off white or possibly even a browner tone. And they did use other dyed tapestries and fragments that they would assemble into a larger textile.
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Co-Host
Interesting. So Egyptian culture was very much hierarchical, if I am correct. And at the top, you have the most wealthy, the powerful, who are adorning themselves in jewels and the finest qualities of linens. And then you also have priests who had their own distinctive garments, which sometimes included animal hides, which I think we'll get to in a Little bit. And then the lower classes were wearing more simple types of garments. Can you speak a bit to the class distinctions in ancient Egypt and the role that clothing specifically played in manifesting these distinctions? Was this intentional in Europe? Of course, in Western fashion, there is a long history.
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Cassidy
Long history, yes. Anyone?
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
So Egypt is interesting because we don't have evidence of any sumptuary laws. So it seems that most of the time, how you dressed depended on what you were doing. So obviously, the wealthy, the nobility, the royal family, they could afford the finest linen. And some of the fine linen in the tomb of Tutankhamen is almost like gauze. It's so incredibly light and fine. And they even talk about royal linen as the highest quality that there was. And then you go down from there. So when we see tomb scenes, often the tomb owner is wearing the most elaborate garment because he is being honored as well as his wife, often as the deceased couple that are being venerated in the funerary cult. And then the people working in the field are wearing clothing appropriate to that sort of work. And it's weird too, because in tomb scenes, the tomb owner and his wife and sometimes a child will be on a papyrus boat in the marshes, both fowling and fishing. And they're wearing these incredibly elaborate garments which you wouldn't have actually worn if you were simply fowling and fishing. But they're doing that to signal that this is in a ritual festival context. So we have to be really careful when we look at the tomb scenes that what they might be wearing is intentionally, because that's not what you normally wear. And they're trying to signal something significant precisely through their choice of clothing. And with priests having a particular garb that's also really interesting because there wasn't before the New Kingdom, a caste, a class of priests. Many people would have rotated for a couple months out of the year in the priesthood.
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Co-Host
Oh, wow.
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
So those sorts of special garments and ritual purity, a lot more people would have had familiarity with than we tend to associate simply looking back in ancient Egypt as this monolithic civilization.
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Cassidy
So back to the most wealthy of Egyptians. When you really look at images of these men and women, it becomes immediately clear that they have mastered the art of artifice. And it's surprisingly androgynous in many ways. Men and women both wore dark colored wigs made from human hair, for instance. They both rimmed their eyes in coal, and both sexes bedecked themselves in finery from their head to their toes. So can you speak to this very similar approach to dressing.
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
It's interesting when we look at men and women's garments, there are specific clothes for each gender. So if we go back, say, to the time of the pyramids, 2500 BCE, men are typically shown in a starched kilt and they really stick out. So it looks in two dimensions. You think, that can't possibly have been what it looked like. And then you look at a statue and it really is sticking out because of this incredibly strong starching. And then they would typically be bare chested. Now, we don't know how much men always walked around bare chested in the Old Kingdom, but you get that sense from the pictorial record whether or not that's true. And women of the Old Kingdom wore sheath dresses, and that continues through the Middle Kingdom. And it's really about 1500 BCE and then especially around the time of Ramses II, about 1250 BCE, where clothing gets much more elaborate and both men and women are wearing layers of diaphanous pleated linen garments that are often multiple kilts, pointed flouncy sleeves. And the style of clothing is very similar, especially then for men and women. And when we see the androgyny, the most is the reign of Tutankhamun's father, Akhenaten, where both in his physical appearance within the pictorial evidence as well as his clothing, he is sometimes virtually indistinguishable from Nefertiti, his wife. Both the body shape and the clothing indicates that there's something interesting going on with gender differentiation during his reign. But, yes, I think to a modern observer, it would be very unusual to step back 3,000 years ago, but for them, this was completely typical.
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Co-Host
And skipping forward just one generation in the future from what you were just talking about, there are many fantastic images of King Tutankhamun and his wife, but there's one in particular that really grabbed Cassidy and I's attention. The couple's facing each other, he's seated, she has his hand on his shoulder, and they both have on their pleated linen garments. And they're wearing the wide beaded necklaces known as pectorals. And on top of their heads are these incredible, incredibly rich, decorated gold headdresses. And this is obviously, quite obviously before photography, so we should probably assume that there might have been some liberties taken with the depictions of these garments. But are there extant pieces that kind of attest to this level of grandeur in the imagery?
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
So that's a great image to choose. On the back of one of the most elaborately decorated thrones of Tutankhamun and what's especially fun about that image is that it's in color, so you could see how they've chosen all these different precious stones and silver for the garments to make it pop, and obviously gold for the headdress. And most of the throne is covered in gold. It's interesting that in ancient Egypt we see so many different crowns and yet we haven't found a piece of one that we can definitively say this is a piece of an ancient Egyptian crown. So, for example, in Tutankhamun's tomb, there were not the crowns buried with him. And that could have been because then the crowns were bequeathed to the next ruler, who then had to wear them, much like the crown jewels of England. So that could be one of the reasons why we don't have that attested. I think there are enough depictions of very elaborate metal vessels, say, where we know that they would almost sculpt these landscapes, even in these ritual vessels. And I think we could probably apply the same understanding to Tutankhamun and Anck Sanamun's very elaborate gold headpieces. I don't think there's any reason that the Egyptians couldn't have made that. It might be perhaps a little bigger, perhaps a little more ornate than reality, but it could very well be a pretty accurate representation of what they would have worn.
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Co-Host
Spectacular. Yeah, that word comes to mind.
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Cassidy
And speaking of spectacular and surviving garments, I have seen more than one example of the exquisite beaded neck dresses in imagery from the period. And these dresses are thought to be depicted with a lozenge type patterning meant to represent the beadwork. So the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has an early surviving example of one of these garments. And it was apparently found in pieces, which I find this incredibly fascinating. Seven thousand individual beads were in pieces, and somebody painstakingly, probably multiple somebodies put back these pieces piece by piece. These dresses resemble net in that they're basically see through. And although they may have been worn over a linen dress, that too would have been relatively sheer. So for me, that begs the question, what was the Egyptian's relationship to the naked body? It would appear to me that it was very much celebrated, or at the very least not something to be hidden.
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Dr. Colleen Darnell
That is exactly correct. And we have abundant evidence from the ancient Egyptians that they did not view nudity or semi sheer garments as at all shocking. And just to give you a great example, because of the connection with these nets dresses, there's a story that we have attested in a Papyrus roughly 1600 BCE, describing things that happened Almost a thousand years earlier, during the reign of a king named Snafu. And King Snafru seems to be a fairly jolly fellow, and he was bored one day. So a member of his court said, we're going to get 20 really beautiful women with these elaborate hairstyles and they're going to row you around in your lake and that will cheer you up some. So they're described as being beautiful of bosom and having these elaborate wigs on their heads, these braided locks, and they're dressed in nets. And we don't know if that refers to a netted dress, like one of those net beaded net dresses, or if these are actual fishing nets that they've cut up and draped over the women's bodies. But it specifically says that they're wearing these nets, either fishnets or beaded net dresses, without anything else underneath. So there is at least one example in literature where, yes, indeed, that's all they were wearing. And it's not. You really get this sense even from the love poetry. There's an example where a woman goes into the Nile wearing one of these white linen garments, which was already pretty see through, and she comes out of the water holding a fish, a tilapia, which has this great regenerative symbolism in ancient Egypt. So we can imagine how sheer the dress would have become when she emerged from the water. And this was an acceptable image in ancient Egypt.
- [28:59]
Cassidy
And when you say love poetry, what are you specifically referring to?
- [29:03]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
So in the time of Ramses II, about 12:50 BCE, we have a corpus of love poetry. It's absolutely beautiful. And John has done some of the most amazing translations of what these texts mean and the hidden message. And there's one that mentions a woman who is dressed like a man going out to trap birds. And the bird smells of incense. And when she captures this bird that smells of incense, she asks her lover if he will help her release the bird. And the riddle of the poem is that the bird is her own soul.
- [29:41]
Co-Host
Wow, that's some deep stuff. Oh, now you've mentioned, I think a couple times, women acting in men's roles, and correct me if I'm wrong, but there was at least one female pharaoh, is that correct?
- [29:55]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
There was. There were in fact a number during Egyptian history, three major ones in the Pharaonic period up until Cleopatra vii, the final Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt, who commits suicide in 30 BCE rather than being dragged back in chains to Rome. The most famous and appropriate for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut. And she's fascinating because in her art she starts out very obviously feminine. So she has a female body, she is wearing a dress, she is wearing a crown appropriate to a queen. Because she was the wife of the previous pharaoh. And when her husband dies, his successor is still quite young. And after about seven years of rule, she becomes co king with this young pharaoh, Thutmose iii. And in her art, she transitions from this female queen. Becoming more androgynous, having pink skin because women traditionally had yellow skin. Men had red skin. So she's pink to show that she's in between role. And she starts to have a less feminized body. And start wearing male clothing. So she'll be not wearing anything up top, a male kilt on. But still have a fairly feminine face. And then in her 2D representations, having this indeterminate skin tone. And by the end of her reign, she's depicted fully masculine. Where she's almost indistinguishable from her co king Thutmose iii. So you can see how she uses the art to solidify her power. Because for the Egyptians, the king was always male. The queen could be very significant even in foreign policy. We know the queens wrote letters to other courts. And probably were quite involved in the decision making. But it's still a gender based role. So to see her take on the role of king. And then have to use clothing, skin tone, artistic representation. To try to harmonize the idea of being a female king.
- [32:06]
Co-Host
Yeah, including wearing a beard in a couple of depictions of her. Am I wrong about this?
- [32:11]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
That's always a point of contention.
- [32:14]
Co-Host
And it's interesting now I'm the one spreading the myths.
- [32:18]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
So when she wears the false beard, and it was always a false beard. So even when the male kings wear them, you can see the strap that's attaching them from the chin onto the head. So when she is fully male, she can wear the beard. Because that was expected of a male king. So I don't think that represents evidence that she went that far. And we have no evidence what she actually wore day to day. And there's even an earlier female king named Sobeknafru. And the one depiction we have of her, which is a statue, she's wearing a dress, but then has a male kilt tied over it. And I think that might be a good clue as to what Hatshepsut probably wore day to day. Is that she maintained, maintained her feminine dress. But then maybe added male regalia to it. But that's just a Guess.
- [33:08]
Co-Host
I also read another. You mentioned silver earlier, and I read a great article talking about jewelry worn by the upper classes. And I was surprised to learn that at the time, silver was more valuable than gold at the time because it was rarer. And included in this jewelry were often all different kinds of jewels, semi precious stones, including lapis lazuli, red and green, Jasper, quartz, turquoise. But almost always these jewels were, or semi precious stones were used to depict a motif of some kind. Could you speak to the role and the symbolism of these particular motifs in jewelries, as well as in some of the elaborate collars and headdresses? What role did imagery of this sort play in dress?
- [33:54]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
That's a great question. And it is so crucial when looking at ancient Egyptian art that much of it is supposed to be red. So when you see a piece of ancient Egyptian jewelry, there is an excellent chance that you're actually looking at a word or at the very least an apotropaic symbol. So the broad colors that we see, often rendered in faience and other jewels, are mimicking flowers and floral elements and petals, things like that. And those would have been worn, particularly during these big festivals and during funerary banquets. Actual floral collars would be worn. We have some of those that were probably worn during the funeral of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings. So it's really neat to see this interplay between a natural material, a flower, and then how that becomes almost fossilized in the stones for which they're reproducing it. A lot of jewelry, for example, this amazing set of jewels of a Middle kingdom princess, roughly 1900 BCE, named Sathothor Yunit, and her jewels were found virtually intact. They're in the Metropolitan Museum. And a lot of her necklaces say something. It's literally a sentence. So one of them says, all life, prosperity and health. And it just looks like symbols. If you don't know the hieroglyphs, but it's actually a message, or she have another pectoral that has the name of a king and shows him smiting a foreign ruler. And all of the little cloisonne details are actually hieroglyphs. So every time you see a work of ancient Egyptian jewelry, there's always some sort of additional meaning, whether it's writing or symbolism.
- [35:40]
Co-Host
Wow, that's really cool. I had no idea about that.
- [35:42]
Cassidy
That's really interesting. And could you actually speak to the influence of foreign dress on Egyptian clothing? Because it would be a mistake to assume that Egyptian dress remained largely unchanged for thousands and Thousands of years. And I feel like that's what most general dress histories would suggest were there changes in dress of the ancient Egyptians that might even suggest like a sort of fashion.
- [36:05]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
That's a great question, and I think the best answer lies in how people dress versus how gods dress. And it's interesting that gods, for example, in the New Kingdom, again, let's say roughly 1250 BCE gods wear traditional clothes exclusively. So goddesses are wearing those sheath dresses with straps that go all the way back to the Old Kingdom, whereas human women of the time would have been wearing those very flouncy white linen ensembles. So we have evidence, for example, in the tomb of Ramses II's great wife, Nefertari, where Nefertari is wearing these flouncy in fashion clothes and she's offering to a goddess whose style is 2000 years old. And I think that's the fun aspect of vintage fashion one could see in ancient Egypt. And we know that secondhand clothes were often bought up to then use as mummy wrappings. So old clothes continued to have a life in ancient Egypt. So we could see some of the fashion change. And then we can also see this acknowledgement of even millennia old styles because of the divine world. And the only exception to that is during the reign of Akhenaten, Tutankhamun's father, where goddesses are suddenly wearing modern fashion of the day. And there are statues in the tomb of Tutankhamen where the goddesses guarding his internal organs are wearing dress that would have been fashionable in his lifetime, as opposed to something going back over a thousand years.
- [37:49]
Cassidy
And at one point, I think in our earlier conversations, you had talked about an influence of the Greeks that introduced new styles into the Egyptians. Is that something that happened at some point? They were influential on Egyptian style.
- [38:02]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
That's an interesting thing to think about, that there are different styles that start to come to the fore. And it's actually really a question of whether it's a continuation of Egyptian styles. And we're simply seeing native traditions change and develop over time, like we saw in the first 3,000 years of Egyptian history, and how much new styles would have been introduced. For example, Cleopatra vii, she was the descendant of a Greek general. She was 100% Greek. As far as we can tell, there might have been some intermarriage into the family. But traditionally we think of her as a Greek ruler of Egypt. So what did she wear? Because in representations on Egyptian temples, she's wearing standard Egyptian clothing. So I think it's really interesting to think about how much we don't know about what was fashionable dress when foreign rulers conquer Egypt and are in charge.
- [38:59]
Co-Host
Oh, yeah, this is great, because I've never really thought about this influence of foreign dress in Egypt. And it really brings up a good point about the relationship between not only clothing and ethnic identity, but also too. If she was a quote unquote, Greek foreign ruler of Egypt, was she using traditional forms of dress to. As a. As almost like an offering to the people or as a way to reach out to the Egyptian people? But I think you have a story about a certain Nubian prince that might get into this.
- [39:29]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
I do. His name is Heka Nefer, and he was a contemporary of Tutankhamun. He probably met Tutankhamun, if the pictorial evidence is to be believed. And Hecanefer as a Nubian prince, is depicted in the tomb of a man named Huy, who was the viceroy, the ruler of Nubia for the Egyptian administration, because Nubia at that time was a colony of Egypt, but they also incorporated local rulers into the administration, and Hekanefer was one of them. So in the tomb of Huy, the Nubian prince, Hekhanfer is depicted wearing Egyptian white linen clothing with then Nubian leather garments over his Egyptian garments. And some Egyptologists have said they're making him dress like a barbarian. And I think that's totally unfair because when Hekonefer is wearing both Egyptian clothing and markers of his status as a Nubian prince, he might very well have intended. And I think this is more likely to say, hey, guys, I outrank you. I'm a Nubian prince and I'm expressing this through my clothing. So I think we have to be really careful when interpreting evidence 3,000 years old.
- [40:41]
Co-Host
Right?
- [40:42]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
Are we putting our modern conceptions or are we trying to understand what they're telling us with their clothing? And in the 1960s, a Yale University mission found Heka Nefer's tomb in Nubia. So we not only have the picture of him in the tomb of Huy, but we have his own tomb. And in his tomb, he's shown dressed entirely like an Egyptian. And he has Egyptian funerary texts because he probably believed in Egyptian funerary religion, as did many Nubians of the time, based on our evidence. So I think it's so cool to see, okay, in his tomb, he's following Egyptian afterlife beliefs, so he's going to be wearing white linen just like an Egyptian. But when he appears in someone else's tomb as a Nubian administrator, he's going to express Both halves of his identity.
- [41:34]
Co-Host
That's fascinating.
- [41:36]
Cassidy
And more on these fascinating intersections in the history of dress after a word from our sponsors.
- [41:47]
Co-Host
Welcome back. We're actually nearing the end of our time together, and I would like to turn our attention to the end of life, if we could, and the clothing worn by people tasked with ensuring one's safe passage from this life to the next. I find the dress of priests particularly interesting. Sometimes you see them depicted wearing animal skins, perhaps stranger, cheetah, maybe leopard across the chest, and these very fascinating cones of wax on their head. And apparently this was designed to gradually melt throughout the day or over the course of a banquet. But could you talk about the wearing of animal skins in ancient Egypt?
- [42:26]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
Definitely. The leopard skin is the marker of the SEM priest. So the SEM, that's the title in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. And the SEM priest was unbelievably important because he was the person who performed the opening of the mouth ritual. And as he does this, he is wearing a white linen garment. And then over that, this leopard skin. And you can see the head and you can see the claws. And there's even a gold version of a leopard head precisely for that garment in the tomb of Tutankhamen. And the SEM priest will hold particular implements to the mouth of the coffin, to the mummy, and then that enables the deceased to eat, drink, and also enjoy lovemaking in the afterlife. So this is a key ritual for enjoying the netherworld and enjoying paradise for the ancient Egyptians. So that was a marker of priesthood, was the leopard skin. And that's actually one of the reasons why Nubia was so important, going back to Hekonefer and the Nubian prince, is that Nubia was where you acquired leopard skins, ostrich feathers, which were important for fans, as well as the gold that made Egypt so rich. So these, what you might think of as luxury items were considered essentials for ancient Egyptian religious practice. And the scented wax cones are an awesome feature of ancient Egyptian costume. They're almost always depicted in the banquet scenes. And you could imagine in the heat, everyone's consuming beer and wine, they're enjoying music. And various scantily clad musicians, normally only wearing jewelry, would be performing and going around serving the guests. And the myrrh that was within these scented wax cones would melt over the wake during the course of the night, as things heated up, you would smell better yet. And is it really neat that within the last 10 years, archaeologists at Amarna, excavating a cemetery, have discovered one of those actual Wax cones in a tomb. So that's exciting. I haven't seen the final publication yet, but it's so cool how all of these things that we only see in representations, you never know when someone's going to find an actual example and confirm exactly how it works.
- [44:52]
Co-Host
That's amazing. I wonder what they did with their wigs once they got the wax in the wig. Did they stay? Did it stay now? Your wig just smelled better.
- [45:00]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
I'd probably wash it. We have laundry lists, title Laundry Men in Ancient Egypt. So they were very concerned about maintaining cleanliness. So it was probably you got dirty and then you washed it, and then you got it all suited up for the next festival.
- [45:14]
Cassidy
Yeah. Hygiene in Ancient Egypt's really interesting because you really, when you compare it to Europe at the time, the emphasis was not the same. But the Egyptians really cared about their hygiene. Correct?
- [45:24]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
They did. We have tweezers, we have razors, we have all of the accoutrement that go along with maintaining personal appearance, in addition to, obviously, the makeup, the incense. And priests, for example, we know, bathed every day. They had, I think, a very different conception, as you mentioned, between what constituted a sanitary life in ancient Egypt in comparison to the. The rest of Europe, say.
- [45:52]
Co-Host
So we talked about this a little bit in conjunction with priest dress and funerary rites, but what role did clothing play for the actual deceased? There's around 5,000 artifacts in King Tut's tomb, for instance, and I believe many of these are jewelry and clothing.
- [46:08]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
Absolutely. So we have wooden chests from the tomb of Tutankhamen that contained everything from his loincloth to his gloves, kilts, probably a shirt he wore as a child is all in his tomb. And it's not just the tomb of Tutankhamun. There was another tomb excavated by an Italian mission around the turn of the last century, the tomb of Ha, which is now in the Egyptian Museum in Turin. It's the only museum in the world outside of Egypt dedicated entirely to Egyptian antiquities. And there were stacks of linen, loincloths, clothing, bed sheets, everything. And what I think is most cool about that material is some of the loincloths have little laundry marks. So it was publicly so that when you sent all of your clothes out to be laundered, you knew which ones were yours so you would get them back properly. And that seems to be the best explanation of these little marks on the clothing.
- [47:05]
Co-Host
And which is really funny because this connects back to our Queen Alexandra episode, talking about the monograms on her laundry as well. So I guess the process of doing Royal Laundry hasn't really changed all that much.
- [47:19]
Cassidy
Worldwide. Indeed. Colleen, thank you so much for being here with us today. That's all the time we have, but we hope, dress listeners, that you take a moment to embrace your inner pharaoh next time you get dressed.
- [47:31]
Co-Host
Thank you so much.
- [47:33]
Dr. Colleen Darnell
Thank you.
- [47:38]
Co-Host
Remember, we love hearing from you, so if you'd like to write to us, you can do so@hellorusthistory.com or you can also DM us on Instagram at Dressed Underscore Podcast, which is of course where you'll find reels and posts accompanying each week's episodes. We get so many questions from you all about our recommendations for fashion history books, so if you're interested, you can always find a link in our show Notes to our bookshop Bookshelf. So that address is bookshop.org shop dressed and there you can find over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles.
- [48:17]
Sponsor
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- [49:00]
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