CHAPTER NINE
CLOTH IN THE
BABYLONIAN WORLD
Irene Good
B
abylonia bore the signature of Sumerian culture during the reign of Ibbi-Sîn.
This was just before the Amorites came into the consciousness of Mesopotamians
at the very beginning of the second millennium BC. Temple architecture, agrarian
life and even commerce had not radically changed from earlier times. This tenacity
to the Mesopotamian gestaltwas vividly reflected in dress. The kaunakesgarment, for
example, was worn since early Uruk times, and also the diagonal spiral-wrapped panel
dress was prevalent as a royal or elite garment, since the early third millennium BC
(Figure 9. 1 ).
Later, particularly during the second millennium, more differentiation in regional
style and more incorporation of those styles within the Babylonian persona were
effected. This was due to political expansions and increased commerce and trade with
surrounding regions, even from far off places such as northeastern Iran and the Persian
Gulf, Egypt and the Mediterranean. Cloth was also a main item of export. These
increases in external contacts from diverse groups influenced dress, with a substantive
change in the style of wearing garments as well as an increase in the woven repertoire.
This change is reflected in texts, but also in the depictions of people in art; principally
glyptic and figurative sculpture (see Figure 10. 5 ).
By the first millennium; an even more cosmopolitan Mesopotamian emerged; as
taste for foreign materials arose after more than a millennium of continuous and
intense interaction from the West and the East. The appetite for imported cloth,
especially from the Syria-Levant region, is well attested in economic and personal
texts and reflected too in modes of dress.
What does the study of cloth and clothing tell us, and why is it important? It is
universal that social groups and social rank are marked by cloth, clothing and mode
of dress. Through the thoughtful study of ancient textiles, fibers, weaving and spinning
implements, viewed within their social and physical environmental contexts, we can
witness not only ancient technology and the role of cloth production in the economic
sphere, but also the relevance of cloth in the definition and production of social
boundaries. The comprehensive study of ancient textiles can help us to understand
some of the social processes that underlie cloth production, exchange, and use: the
generation and regeneration of style, genre, aesthetic and the generation of symbolic