Weaving at Hierakonpolis

The shroud enveloping the elephant at Tomb 23 in the elite cemetery (HK6): with a weave of 20 x 11 threads per cm and estimated to cover 20m², it would have required some 60km of thread to make. Experiments have shown that an experienced spinner can spin 58m of linen thread per hour, so a single person would have had to work 1,071 hours just to produce the thread. When the weaving process is added, the shroud would have taken a single worker toiling 8 hours a day no less than 191 days - or more than 6 months. Since this is certainly not the only piece of textile from Hierakonpolis, and not the finest (that is 30 x 30 threads per cm), a fair number of persons must have been working in textile production full time.

The most elaborate weave comes from the aurochs burial at Tomb 19 in the elite cemetery (HK6), and consists of twelve fragments of a robust, flat ‘mat’, complete with selvedges and an entire corner. Very thick threads (composed of multiple S2S plied yarns) were tightly twisted together to form a distinctive pattern of ‘squares’ on one side of the fabric, and a herringbone pattern on the other.

From above Tomb 20/21 in the elite cemetery (HK6) there were textiles produced from plied yarn twisted in the Z-direction (Z2S counter-clockwise spin, plied clockwise), a technique that was in use until it was superseded by the new and uniquely Egyptian S-spin at an undetermined stage in the early Predynastic period. A small fragment of a red-coloured textile with a faint residue of malachite was also recovered from above Tomb 20/21.

From Burials 16 in the non-elite cemetery (HK43) the threads were predominantly single, S-spun (clockwise rotation), with some two-plied (doubled), threads. The plied threads were S-spun and S-twisted. The textiles so far examined from HK43 (Naqada IIB) were all produced from yarns spun by the new method. Unlike the other grave goods, there is no evidence of the reuse of old household material, and it seems that these textiles were specifically produced for the funerary context.

C-Ware elliptical bowl from Tomb 3802 at Badari, Naqada IA-IIB period

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February 26, 2025   Takahiko Nakagawa