With over seven billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day, we all get dressed. Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast where we explore the who, what, when, of why we wear. We are fashion historians and your hosts April Callahan, I'm Cassidy Zachary. Welcome. Today's episode is very exciting because April, we have the distinctive pleasure of welcoming Dr Colleen Darnell to the show. Colleens 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 Past Historical Fiction and New Kingdom Egypt provided the first analysis of a genre of quote unquote historical fiction written in ancient Egypt between circa twelve seventy b C. And Dr Darnell has also led archaeological expeditions in Egypt and curated museum exhibitions, including Echoes of Egypt, Conjuring the Land of the Pharaohs and Cassidy and I Actually discovered you on Instagram um where you have two accounts, the first of which is at the Daily Higher Glyphs, where she shares her extensive knowledge on each ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the second um Instagram I think is going to be quite intriguing to any of our listeners. Please follow Calleen at Vintage Underscore Egyptologists because this documents her scholastic adventures in high style, and we mean high stal because Colleen and her husband John Darnelle, they dressed exclusively in vintage clothing with a particular focus on the nineteen twenties. 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, Thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor. 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. Um, 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 three thousand years. It's a lot of dresses. Yes, But before we dig into this topic, get it, uh, friends, can you tell us a little bit about how you became an egyptologist? Um, kind of what sparked your interest and your academic pursuits into studying, you know, ancient cultures. And you never know this episode address might inspire a few butting egyptologists themselves out there that that would be really great. So I think for me, ancient Egypt was 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 your 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 archaeological expeditions in Egypt, and as we mentioned in the intro, you have a love for ninetwenties fashion so much that is mainstaple of your wardrobe. You're 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 um 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. Of course, did it 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 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 yourself. 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 droppers, Cottons, Linen's those are the most practical things to wear in addition to piss 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 oldies and do more of the later fashion with with some mixed in, but no vintage is harmed during the course of archaeological expeditions. Can you talk a little bit about where you source and collect your vintage from? Is it all over? It really is all over. So there's amazing vendors here in New York City, Wildfell Hall, Noble Vintage Clue here. They come to a lot of events and so it's fun to see the closing person. I think that's so important, particularly when starting vantage collections. Just go everywhere, look at it, gets how it feels and fits, and visiting stores around and obviously Instagram and at see the Internet in general is such an amazing source. I just had this revelation all of a sudden, So there's there's some kind of a relationship between your your hunt for the ancient and your hunt for your vintage. They kind of probably fulfill that same interest consolutely. I mean, it's all about understanding how things work, understanding what a particular style was, what it meant, and so analyzing I think, is the dress nine is the dress ninety two? You're looking for the same clues as trying to data hieroglyphic inscription, so down to the label, that's what are their labels off into scenes. So I think the hunt for vintage is exactly that it can be this academic and fun pursuit because that's what I think studying higher glypses um. So the discovery of King Tut's nearly intact Tombo of Worse as we all know, received international press coverage um and it causes sensation, and people around the world were like captivated by this, reading all the news every single day. Can you tell us a little bit more about this discovery. Why was important to the field of Egyptology but also the general public. Why was the general public so fascinated? That's a really great question. And the discovery of the T two uncommon 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 two Duncommons two 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 a really interesting religious texts even on his rines that aren't attested in any other two so that was key to our knowledge. And then, because this is the age of mass media in the nineteen twenties, it spreads like wildfire and catches on for everything from king tut lemons and advertising to jazz age songs. But what I think even more fascinating about looking at Egyptomania in the nineteen twenties is that it already starts prior to the discovery of the tomb of two Doncommon. 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 nineteen twenties and Gyptomania is always accurate either, and even famous Egyptomania icons like Groundmans Egyptian Theater was constructed in before the tomb was discovered in November, So it's almost this amazing coming together a different historical events where Egypt is very much part of the imagination. The discovery of Nefertidis bust in nineteen twelve, the excavations at a Morna that already had really brought to the full Egyptian iconography interest in ancient Egypt, and then to have the spectacular gold mask and well preserved tomb makes it explode. Yeah. And on the show we speak a lot to the role that fashion plays and reflecting the happenings of given era, and we've spoken about how it proceeds in many ways and anticipates things, so that's perhaps not as surprising, um, and this discovery proves no exception, So it's not surprising that fashion responds immediately. And the Chinese 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 Left Kowitz and Pototski, even when as far as to offer a hundred thousand dollars to the excavation team directly for the exclusive style rights of the tomb findings. So, and I have to say, when you start looking at this stuff, some of it's better than others, the more definitely. Um So, it's not long before the markets inundated and all things Egypt from the mass produced scarf to the upper echelons of the major order oat coature. 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. I do have several Egyptian revival pieces. Having studied Egyptomania, it's even more fun to collect it because you can kind of see how it all fits in. So I have a couple pre nineteen twenties Egyptian revival pieces brooches that incorporates scarabs and and lotus motifs, which I really enjoy wearing, and then from the nine twenties, probably my favorite piece is a black velvet opera coat with silver beads with with silver beads that are in the design of pseudo hieroglyphs. They don't actually say anything uh sphinx and also Egyptian royal heads. We're in the typical nemes headressed just like we would see on too uncommon So 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 kind of a direct copy. And I think some of those inspirational designs can be really interesting, yeah, versus the literal interpretations of them, the literal copying of the design onto a scarf exactly. There's a lot of that, particularly mid century where it is the head of Deffert TV on an object, and that's really fun as well. But I like the subtlenance Egyptian Revival. So there was a lot of press coverage, as we've mentioned about this, and journalists for the New York Times, under the headline for Onic Styles set New Fashions quoted a West End London dressmaker in the n articles saying quote, every welldest woman will be wearing evening gowns designed after ancient Egyptian models. Lord Canaverans discoveries in Egypt had a tremendous effect upon the styles too in common overcoats, suits, hats, along with ancient Egyptian lines, but with a touch of modern smartness. And they goes on to say Egyptian headdresses, scarabs, pearls had increased in demand. Practically all the fashionable jewelers are displaying ancient styles of jewelry, and which is exactly what what 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 that inspired them in the first place in ancient Egypt. So I'm hoping that we can speak about this bit further after award from our sponsors. Welcome back Dress Detective Hats on our Dress Detective closes, Princes, we are about to take a giant leap from the nineteen twenties all the way back to three thousand BC. So let's start with the very basics, because it would appear to me that for over three thousand 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. So you're absolutely right. Linen is the foundational material for ancient Egyptian garments, and we can push that date back to five thousand b C, where we had the first piece of linen attested in the archaeological context, so even further back, which is credible, 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 latecomer. 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't get quite cold at night. And a Greek historian who visited Egypt roughly for fifty BC 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 five thousand 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. And I'm curious, do they because you do associate white linen with the Egyptians, was there any sort of dying of that linen? Ever? Was that incorporated into the what they wore? Most of the linen's we have would have been white or off white, or possibly even a browner tone. And they did use other dyed tapestries uh and fragments that they would assemble into a larger textile interesting um. 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 jewels and the finest qualities of linen's, and then you also have priests who have had their own distinctive garments, which sometimes included animal hides, which I think we'll get to in a little bit. Um. And then the lower classes, Um, we're wearing more simple types of garments. Um. Can you speak a bit to the class distinctions in ancient Egypt and the role that clothing specifically played in manifesting these distinctions. Um, you know, was this intentional? You know? In Europe and course in Western fashion, there is a long history here. 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 two Oncommon 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 two scenes, often the two 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 call, 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 fouling and fishing, and they're wearing these incredibly elaborate garments which you wouldn't have actually worn if you were simply fouling and fishing, but they're doing that to signal that this is an a ritual festival contact. 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 cast a class of priests. Many people would have rotated for a couple of months out of the year in the priesthood, so those sorts of special garments and ritual purity a lot more people would have had familiarity with. Then we tend to associate simply looking back in ancient Egypt does is monolithic civilization, So back to the most wealthy of Egyptians. When you really look at images of these um men and women, it becomes immediately clear that they have mastered the art of artifice, and it's surprisingly androgenous in many ways. Um Men and women both wore dark colored wigs that made from human hair. For instance, they both rammed their eyes in coal, and both sexes protected themselves and finery from their head to their toes. So can you speak to this very similar approach to dressing. It's interesting when we look at men and women's garments, there are specific clothes for each gender. So if we go back state at the time of the Pyramids two thousand five dred b C. 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 beer chested. Now we don't know how much men always walked around bear 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 war sheath dresses, and that continues through the Middle Kingdom, and it's really about fifteen hundred BC, and then especially around the time of Ramsey's the second about both fifty b C, where clothing gets much more elaborate and both men and women are wearing layers of diaphanous pleaded linen garments that are often multiple kilts, pointed flouncy sleeves, and the style of clothing very similar, especially then for men and women. And when we see the androgyny the most is the reign of Tudon Common's father Anton, where both in his physical appearance within the pictorial evidence as well as his clothing, he is sometimes virtually indistinguishable from Nefer TV his wife. So 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 three thousand years ago, but for them this was completely typical and skipping forward just one generation in the future from what you're just talking about. You know, there are many fantastic images of King to in Common and his wife Um. But there's one in particular that really grabbed casting and eye attention. UM. The couples spacing each other. He's seated, she has his hand on his shoulder, um, and they both have on their pleated linen garments and they're wearing the I beat it Uh necklaces known as pectorals. And on top of their heads are these incredibly rich decorated gold head dresses. And this is obviously quite obviously before photography, so we should probably 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 randeur the in in the imagery, so that that's a great image to choose on the back of one of the most collaborately decorated thrones of tooton Common. And what's especially fun about that image is as in color, so you can see how they've chosen all these different precious stones and silver for the garments to make it pop, and obviously gold for the head dress, 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 if, for example, in two Duncommons too, 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 jeules of England. So that could be one of the reasons why we don't have that is tested. I think there are enough depictions of very elaborate metal vessels sat 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 two uncommon and uncs and nomens very elaborate gold headpieces. So I don't think there's any reason that the Egyptians couldn't have made that. So 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 learned. I mean spectacular that where it comes to mind, and speaking of spectacular and surviving garments. I have seen more than one example of exquisite beaded net dresses in imagery from the period, and these dresses are thought to be depicted with a lozenge type patterning meant to represent the bead work. 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 hand painstakingly, probably multiple somebody's put back these pieces piece by piece, and these dresses resemble net and that they're basically see through, and although they may have been worn over a linen dress, that two would have been relatively sheer. So for me, that begs the question what was the Egyptians relationship to the naked body? And it would appear to me that it was very much celebrated, or at the very least not something to be hidden. That is exactly correct, and we have abundant evidence from the ancient Egyptians that they did not view nudity or semi sheer garments as it all shocking. And just to give you a great example, because of the connection with these net dresses. There's a story that we have attested in a papyrus roughly BC, describing things that happened almost a thousand years earlier during the reign of a king named Snaffer, and King Snaffer it seems to be a fairly jolly fellow and he was blurred one day, so a member of his court said, well, we're going to get twenty really beautiful women with these elaborate hairstyles, and they're going to row you around in your lake and that will cheer you up. Sode. So they're described as being um 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 beated 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 fish nets or beated 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 attalapia, which has this great regenerative symbolism in ancient Egypt. So we can imagine how sheared the dress would have become when she emerged from the water. And this was an acceptable image in an ancient Egypt. And when you say love poetry, what are you specifically referring to. So in the time of Ramsey's the second about twelve fifty b c. We have a corpus of love poetry. It's it's absolutely beautiful and John has done some of the most amazing translations of what these texts mean. And the hidden message and the 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 asked her lover if he will help her release the bird. And the riddle of the poem is that the bird is her own soul. Ah, that's some deep stuff. Oh, now you've mentioned I think a couple of times um women acting in men's roles and correct me if I'm wrong. But there was at least one female pharaoh? Is that correct? There? What? There were? In fact a number during Egyptian history, three major ones in the Fornic period up until clip Batchel of the seventh, the final uh Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt, who commits suicide in the thirty BC rather than being dragged back in chains to Rome. The most famous and appropriate for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in York, is the female pharaoh hot shechep Soook. And she's fascinating because in her heart she starts out very obviously feminine, so she has a female body, she's wearing a dress, she's 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 Topmost the third And in her art she transitions from this female queen becoming more androgynous, having pink skin because women traditionally had yellow skin, men had redskin, so she's pink to show that she's kind of this 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 hilt on, but still have a fairly feminine face, and then in her two D 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 tutmost the third 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 queen's wrote letters to other courts and probably were quite involved in the decision making, but it's still a gender based role to 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, including wearing a beard and a couple of depictions of her and I am I wrong about this? That's always a point of contention and interesting there 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 which he actually wore day to day. And there's even an earlier female king named so Baknfru, 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 hot sch ups it probably wore day to day, is that she maintained her feminine dress but then maybe added male regalia to it, but that that's just a guess. I also got another You mentioned silver earlier, and I read a great article um 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, I guess um and and included in this jewelry were often all different kinds of jewels um semi precious stones, including lapis, lazuli, red and green jasper courts turquoise, but almost always these jewels were or semi precious stones were used to depict a motif of some kind. Um. So could you speak to the role and the symbolism of these particular motifs in in in jewelries as well as in um some of the elaborate collars and head dresses, Like what role did imagery of this sort play in dress? That's a great question. And it is so crucial when looking at ancient Egyptian art that so much of it is supposed to be read. So when you see a piece of ancient Egyptian jewelry, there is an excellent chance that you're actually looking at a word or the very least in patropaic symbol. So the broad colors that we see often rendered in finance and other jewels are mimicking flowers and floral elements and and pedals, 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 too uncommon 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 nine BC named sat hathor Unit, and her jewels were found virtually intact there in the Metropolitan Museum, and a lot of her necklaces say something. It's literally a sentence. So one of them said as 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 should you have another pectoral that has the name of a king and shows him smiting a foreign ruler and all of the little cloison a details are actually hieroglyphs. So every time you see a work of ancient Egyptian jey, there's always some sort of additional meaning, whether it's writing or symbolism. That's really cool. I had no idea. That's very 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 kind of 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. That's a great question, and I think the best answer lies in how p bowl dress versus how God's dress. And it's interesting that God's, for example, in the New Kingdom again let's say roughly twelve fifty BC, 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 Rameses, the second great wife Nefer Tari, where never Tari is wearing these flouncy in fashion clothes and she's offering to a goddess whose style is two thousand years old. And I think that's kind of the fun aspect of vintage fashion, one could say. And we know that second hand clothes were often bought up to then use his mummy wrappings, so all close 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 Ahnton commons Father, where goddesses are suddenly wearing modern fashion of the day, and there are statues in the tomb of two Uncommon 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. And at one point, I think in our earlier conversations you have talked about an influence of the Greeks that introduced new styles into the Egyptians. Is that something that happened at some point very influential on Egyptian style. That's an interesting thing to think about, that there are different styles that start to come to the four 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, kind of like we saw in the first three thousand years of Egyptian history. And how much new styles would have been introduced. So, for example, Cleopatra the seventh, she was the descendant of a Greek general, so she was 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. Oh yeah, this is great because I've never really thought about this influence of foreign dress in Egypt. Um. 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 kind of as as almost like an offering to the people, or as a way to reach out to the Egyptian people. Um. But I think you have a story about a certain Nubian prince that might get into this. I do. His name is heckan Neffer, and he was a contemporary of too uncommon he probably met to comment, if the pictorial evidence is to be believed. And Hacka, ever as a Nubian prince, is depicted in the tomb of a man named Hui, 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 heckan Effer was one of them. So in the tomb of WHOI the Nubian prince, hecan Effort is depicted wearing Egyptian white linen clothe thing with then Nubian leather garments over his Egyptian garments, and so many Gyptologists have said they're making him dressed like a barbarian. And I think that's totally unfair, because when heckan Effort 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 three thousand years old. Are we putting our modern conceptions or are we trying to understand what they're telling us with their clothing. And in the nineteen sixties, a Yale University mission found Heckan Effert's tomb in Nubia. So we not only have the picture of him in the tomb of WHOI, but we have his own tomb. And in his tomb he's shown dressed entirely in Egyptian and he has Egyptian funerary text 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 in Egyptian afterlife beliefs. So he's gonna 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. That's fascinating. And more on these fascinating intersections in the history of dress. For a word from our sponsors, 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 task with ensuring one's safe passage from this life to the next. Um. I find the dress of priests particularly interesting. Um. Sometimes you see them too picked in wearing animal skins, perhaps cheetah, maybe leopard across the chest um, and 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. Um. But could you talk about the wearing of animal skins in ancient Egypt? Definitely? The leopard skin is the marker of the sem priests. So the sem that's the title in ancient EGYPTI 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's 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 two inch n common and the sem priest will hold particular implement to the mouth of the coffin to the mummy, and then that enables the deceased to eat, drink and also enjoy love making in the afterlife. So this is a key ritual for enjoying the nether world to enjoying paradise for the ancient Egyptians. So that was the marker of of priest shore was the leopard skin. And that's actually one of the reasons why Nubia was so important, going back to Hecka Nefer 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. There almost always depicted in the banquet scenes, and you can imagine in the heat everyone's consuming beer and wine. Um they're enjoying music and various scantily clad musicians normally only wearing jewelry would be performing and going around serving the guests, and the mirror that was within these scented wax cones would melt over the wig during the course of the night. As you know, things heated up, you would smell better. Yet, and is it really neat that within the last ten years, archaeologists at a Marna excavating as 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. That's amazing. I wonder what they did with their wigs once they got the wax in the wig? Did they stay? Stay? Now you're just I'd probably watch. I mean, we have laundry lists title laundrymen in in Asian Egypt, so they were very concerned about maintaining cleanliness. So it's probably got dirty and then you washed it and then you got it all suited up for the next festival. Your hygiene and 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 they did. We have tweezers, we have raizors, we have all of the accouchrament that go along with maintaining personal appearance, in addition to obviously the makeup, the incense, and priests for example, we know bathed every day. So they had to I think a very different conception, as you mentioned, between what constituted a sanitary life in Asian Egypt in comparison to the rest of of of Europe. Say um, so we talked about this a little bit in conjunction with the pre stress um and funerary right, um. But what role did clothing play, um um for the actual deceased. There's around five thousand artifacts in King Tut's tomb, for instance, and and I believe many of these are jewelry and clothing. Absolutely so. We have wooden chess from the tomb of Todon Common that contained everything from his loin cloths to his gloves, kilts, probably a shirt he wore as a child. Um is all in his tomb. And it's not just the tomb of Toodon Common. There was another tomb excavated by an Italian mission around the turn of the last century. The Tomb of ca which is now in the Egyptian Museum in Turing. It's the only museum in the world outside of Egypt dedicated entirely to Egyptian antiquities. And there were stacks of linen, loin cloths, clothing, bedsheets, everything, And what I think is most cool about that material is some of the loin cloths have little laundry marks. So it was always said 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 that seems to be the best explanation of these little marks on the clothing. And which is really funny because this connects back to our Queen Alexandra episode um talking about the monograms on our laundry as well. So I guess the process of doing royal laundry hasn't really changed worldwide, indeed, probably. Thank you so much for being here with us today. That's all the time we have. But we hope, dressed listeners, that you take a moment to embrace your inner faraoh next time you get dressed. Thank you so much. Thank you. Remember you can find images to accompany each week's episode on Instagram at Dressed Underscore podcast. This is also our Twitter handle. You can find us on Facebook at Dressed podcast without the underscore, and if you'd like to email us, you can do so at Dressed at how stuffwork dot com. Don't it about our brand new merch store where you can get Dressed approved T shirts, mugs, notebooks, stickers and super cute topebacs. Just go to ww dot t public dot com, Forward, slash Dressed, and last but not least, thank you again to Dr Colleen Darnel and also our producers at how Stuff Works, Holly Fry and Casey Pegrum. Catch you next week. This episode of Dress was recorded at Mouth Media Network Studio in New York, powered by Sunheiser

With over seven billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day, we all get dressed. Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast where we explore the who, what, when, of why we wear. We are fashion historians and your hosts April Callahan, I'm Cassidy Zachary. Welcome. Today's episode is very exciting because April, we have the distinctive pleasure of welcoming Dr Colleen Darnell to the show. Colleens 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 Past Historical Fiction and New Kingdom Egypt provided the first analysis of a genre of quote unquote historical fiction written in ancient Egypt between circa twelve seventy b C. And Dr Darnell has also led archaeological expeditions in Egypt and curated museum exhibitions, including Echoes of Egypt, Conjuring the Land of the Pharaohs and Cassidy and I Actually discovered you on Instagram um where you have two accounts, the first of which is at the Daily Higher Glyphs, where she shares her extensive knowledge on each ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the second um Instagram I think is going to be quite intriguing to any of our listeners. Please follow Calleen at Vintage Underscore Egyptologists because this documents her scholastic adventures in high style, and we mean high stal because Colleen and her husband John Darnelle, they dressed exclusively in vintage clothing with a particular focus on the nineteen twenties. 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, Thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor. 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. Um, 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 three thousand years. It's a lot of dresses. Yes, But before we dig into this topic, get it, uh, friends, can you tell us a little bit about how you became an egyptologist? Um, kind of what sparked your interest and your academic pursuits into studying, you know, ancient cultures. And you never know this episode address might inspire a few butting egyptologists themselves out there that that would be really great. So I think for me, ancient Egypt was 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 your 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 archaeological expeditions in Egypt, and as we mentioned in the intro, you have a love for ninetwenties fashion so much that is mainstaple of your wardrobe. You're 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 um 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. Of course, did it 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 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 yourself. 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 droppers, Cottons, Linen's those are the most practical things to wear in addition to piss 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 oldies and do more of the later fashion with with some mixed in, but no vintage is harmed during the course of archaeological expeditions. Can you talk a little bit about where you source and collect your vintage from? Is it all over? It really is all over. So there's amazing vendors here in New York City, Wildfell Hall, Noble Vintage Clue here. They come to a lot of events and so it's fun to see the closing person. I think that's so important, particularly when starting vantage collections. Just go everywhere, look at it, gets how it feels and fits, and visiting stores around and obviously Instagram and at see the Internet in general is such an amazing source. I just had this revelation all of a sudden, So there's there's some kind of a relationship between your your hunt for the ancient and your hunt for your vintage. They kind of probably fulfill that same interest consolutely. I mean, it's all about understanding how things work, understanding what a particular style was, what it meant, and so analyzing I think, is the dress nine is the dress ninety two? You're looking for the same clues as trying to data hieroglyphic inscription, so down to the label, that's what are their labels off into scenes. So I think the hunt for vintage is exactly that it can be this academic and fun pursuit because that's what I think studying higher glypses um. So the discovery of King Tut's nearly intact Tombo of Worse as we all know, received international press coverage um and it causes sensation, and people around the world were like captivated by this, reading all the news every single day. Can you tell us a little bit more about this discovery. Why was important to the field of Egyptology but also the general public. Why was the general public so fascinated? That's a really great question. And the discovery of the T two uncommon 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 two Duncommons two 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 a really interesting religious texts even on his rines that aren't attested in any other two so that was key to our knowledge. And then, because this is the age of mass media in the nineteen twenties, it spreads like wildfire and catches on for everything from king tut lemons and advertising to jazz age songs. But what I think even more fascinating about looking at Egyptomania in the nineteen twenties is that it already starts prior to the discovery of the tomb of two Doncommon. 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 nineteen twenties and Gyptomania is always accurate either, and even famous Egyptomania icons like Groundmans Egyptian Theater was constructed in before the tomb was discovered in November, So it's almost this amazing coming together a different historical events where Egypt is very much part of the imagination. The discovery of Nefertidis bust in nineteen twelve, the excavations at a Morna that already had really brought to the full Egyptian iconography interest in ancient Egypt, and then to have the spectacular gold mask and well preserved tomb makes it explode. Yeah. And on the show we speak a lot to the role that fashion plays and reflecting the happenings of given era, and we've spoken about how it proceeds in many ways and anticipates things, so that's perhaps not as surprising, um, and this discovery proves no exception, So it's not surprising that fashion responds immediately. And the Chinese 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 Left Kowitz and Pototski, even when as far as to offer a hundred thousand dollars to the excavation team directly for the exclusive style rights of the tomb findings. So, and I have to say, when you start looking at this stuff, some of it's better than others, the more definitely. Um So, it's not long before the markets inundated and all things Egypt from the mass produced scarf to the upper echelons of the major order oat coature. 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. I do have several Egyptian revival pieces. Having studied Egyptomania, it's even more fun to collect it because you can kind of see how it all fits in. So I have a couple pre nineteen twenties Egyptian revival pieces brooches that incorporates scarabs and and lotus motifs, which I really enjoy wearing, and then from the nine twenties, probably my favorite piece is a black velvet opera coat with silver beads with with silver beads that are in the design of pseudo hieroglyphs. They don't actually say anything uh sphinx and also Egyptian royal heads. We're in the typical nemes headressed just like we would see on too uncommon So 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 kind of a direct copy. And I think some of those inspirational designs can be really interesting, yeah, versus the literal interpretations of them, the literal copying of the design onto a scarf exactly. There's a lot of that, particularly mid century where it is the head of Deffert TV on an object, and that's really fun as well. But I like the subtlenance Egyptian Revival. So there was a lot of press coverage, as we've mentioned about this, and journalists for the New York Times, under the headline for Onic Styles set New Fashions quoted a West End London dressmaker in the n articles saying quote, every welldest woman will be wearing evening gowns designed after ancient Egyptian models. Lord Canaverans discoveries in Egypt had a tremendous effect upon the styles too in common overcoats, suits, hats, along with ancient Egyptian lines, but with a touch of modern smartness. And they goes on to say Egyptian headdresses, scarabs, pearls had increased in demand. Practically all the fashionable jewelers are displaying ancient styles of jewelry, and which is exactly what what 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 that inspired them in the first place in ancient Egypt. So I'm hoping that we can speak about this bit further after award from our sponsors. Welcome back Dress Detective Hats on our Dress Detective closes, Princes, we are about to take a giant leap from the nineteen twenties all the way back to three thousand BC. So let's start with the very basics, because it would appear to me that for over three thousand 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. So you're absolutely right. Linen is the foundational material for ancient Egyptian garments, and we can push that date back to five thousand b C, where we had the first piece of linen attested in the archaeological context, so even further back, which is credible, 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 latecomer. 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't get quite cold at night. And a Greek historian who visited Egypt roughly for fifty BC 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 five thousand 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. And I'm curious, do they because you do associate white linen with the Egyptians, was there any sort of dying of that linen? Ever? Was that incorporated into the what they wore? Most of the linen's we have would have been white or off white, or possibly even a browner tone. And they did use other dyed tapestries uh and fragments that they would assemble into a larger textile interesting um. 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 jewels and the finest qualities of linen's, and then you also have priests who have had their own distinctive garments, which sometimes included animal hides, which I think we'll get to in a little bit. Um. And then the lower classes, Um, we're wearing more simple types of garments. Um. Can you speak a bit to the class distinctions in ancient Egypt and the role that clothing specifically played in manifesting these distinctions. Um, you know, was this intentional? You know? In Europe and course in Western fashion, there is a long history here. 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 two Oncommon 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 two scenes, often the two 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 call, 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 fouling and fishing, and they're wearing these incredibly elaborate garments which you wouldn't have actually worn if you were simply fouling and fishing, but they're doing that to signal that this is an a ritual festival contact. 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 cast a class of priests. Many people would have rotated for a couple of months out of the year in the priesthood, so those sorts of special garments and ritual purity a lot more people would have had familiarity with. Then we tend to associate simply looking back in ancient Egypt does is monolithic civilization, So back to the most wealthy of Egyptians. When you really look at images of these um men and women, it becomes immediately clear that they have mastered the art of artifice, and it's surprisingly androgenous in many ways. Um Men and women both wore dark colored wigs that made from human hair. For instance, they both rammed their eyes in coal, and both sexes protected themselves and finery from their head to their toes. So can you speak to this very similar approach to dressing. It's interesting when we look at men and women's garments, there are specific clothes for each gender. So if we go back state at the time of the Pyramids two thousand five dred b C. 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 beer chested. Now we don't know how much men always walked around bear 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 war sheath dresses, and that continues through the Middle Kingdom, and it's really about fifteen hundred BC, and then especially around the time of Ramsey's the second about both fifty b C, where clothing gets much more elaborate and both men and women are wearing layers of diaphanous pleaded linen garments that are often multiple kilts, pointed flouncy sleeves, and the style of clothing very similar, especially then for men and women. And when we see the androgyny the most is the reign of Tudon Common's father Anton, where both in his physical appearance within the pictorial evidence as well as his clothing, he is sometimes virtually indistinguishable from Nefer TV his wife. So 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 three thousand years ago, but for them this was completely typical and skipping forward just one generation in the future from what you're just talking about. You know, there are many fantastic images of King to in Common and his wife Um. But there's one in particular that really grabbed casting and eye attention. UM. The couples spacing each other. He's seated, she has his hand on his shoulder, um, and they both have on their pleated linen garments and they're wearing the I beat it Uh necklaces known as pectorals. And on top of their heads are these incredibly rich decorated gold head dresses. And this is obviously quite obviously before photography, so we should probably 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 randeur the in in the imagery, so that that's a great image to choose on the back of one of the most collaborately decorated thrones of tooton Common. And what's especially fun about that image is as in color, so you can see how they've chosen all these different precious stones and silver for the garments to make it pop, and obviously gold for the head dress, 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 if, for example, in two Duncommons too, 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 jeules of England. So that could be one of the reasons why we don't have that is tested. I think there are enough depictions of very elaborate metal vessels sat 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 two uncommon and uncs and nomens very elaborate gold headpieces. So I don't think there's any reason that the Egyptians couldn't have made that. So 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 learned. I mean spectacular that where it comes to mind, and speaking of spectacular and surviving garments. I have seen more than one example of exquisite beaded net dresses in imagery from the period, and these dresses are thought to be depicted with a lozenge type patterning meant to represent the bead work. 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 hand painstakingly, probably multiple somebody's put back these pieces piece by piece, and these dresses resemble net and that they're basically see through, and although they may have been worn over a linen dress, that two would have been relatively sheer. So for me, that begs the question what was the Egyptians relationship to the naked body? And it would appear to me that it was very much celebrated, or at the very least not something to be hidden. That is exactly correct, and we have abundant evidence from the ancient Egyptians that they did not view nudity or semi sheer garments as it all shocking. And just to give you a great example, because of the connection with these net dresses. There's a story that we have attested in a papyrus roughly BC, describing things that happened almost a thousand years earlier during the reign of a king named Snaffer, and King Snaffer it seems to be a fairly jolly fellow and he was blurred one day, so a member of his court said, well, we're going to get twenty really beautiful women with these elaborate hairstyles, and they're going to row you around in your lake and that will cheer you up. Sode. So they're described as being um 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 beated 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 fish nets or beated 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 attalapia, which has this great regenerative symbolism in ancient Egypt. So we can imagine how sheared the dress would have become when she emerged from the water. And this was an acceptable image in an ancient Egypt. And when you say love poetry, what are you specifically referring to. So in the time of Ramsey's the second about twelve fifty b c. We have a corpus of love poetry. It's it's absolutely beautiful and John has done some of the most amazing translations of what these texts mean. And the hidden message and the 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 asked her lover if he will help her release the bird. And the riddle of the poem is that the bird is her own soul. Ah, that's some deep stuff. Oh, now you've mentioned I think a couple of times um women acting in men's roles and correct me if I'm wrong. But there was at least one female pharaoh? Is that correct? There? What? There were? In fact a number during Egyptian history, three major ones in the Fornic period up until clip Batchel of the seventh, the final uh Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt, who commits suicide in the thirty BC rather than being dragged back in chains to Rome. The most famous and appropriate for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in York, is the female pharaoh hot shechep Soook. And she's fascinating because in her heart she starts out very obviously feminine, so she has a female body, she's wearing a dress, she's 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 Topmost the third And in her art she transitions from this female queen becoming more androgynous, having pink skin because women traditionally had yellow skin, men had redskin, so she's pink to show that she's kind of this 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 hilt on, but still have a fairly feminine face, and then in her two D 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 tutmost the third 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 queen's wrote letters to other courts and probably were quite involved in the decision making, but it's still a gender based role to 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, including wearing a beard and a couple of depictions of her and I am I wrong about this? That's always a point of contention and interesting there 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 which he actually wore day to day. And there's even an earlier female king named so Baknfru, 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 hot sch ups it probably wore day to day, is that she maintained her feminine dress but then maybe added male regalia to it, but that that's just a guess. I also got another You mentioned silver earlier, and I read a great article um 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, I guess um and and included in this jewelry were often all different kinds of jewels um semi precious stones, including lapis, lazuli, red and green jasper courts turquoise, but almost always these jewels were or semi precious stones were used to depict a motif of some kind. Um. So could you speak to the role and the symbolism of these particular motifs in in in jewelries as well as in um some of the elaborate collars and head dresses, Like what role did imagery of this sort play in dress? That's a great question. And it is so crucial when looking at ancient Egyptian art that so much of it is supposed to be read. So when you see a piece of ancient Egyptian jewelry, there is an excellent chance that you're actually looking at a word or the very least in patropaic symbol. So the broad colors that we see often rendered in finance and other jewels are mimicking flowers and floral elements and and pedals, 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 too uncommon 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 nine BC named sat hathor Unit, and her jewels were found virtually intact there in the Metropolitan Museum, and a lot of her necklaces say something. It's literally a sentence. So one of them said as 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 should you have another pectoral that has the name of a king and shows him smiting a foreign ruler and all of the little cloison a details are actually hieroglyphs. So every time you see a work of ancient Egyptian jey, there's always some sort of additional meaning, whether it's writing or symbolism. That's really cool. I had no idea. That's very 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 kind of 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. That's a great question, and I think the best answer lies in how p bowl dress versus how God's dress. And it's interesting that God's, for example, in the New Kingdom again let's say roughly twelve fifty BC, 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 Rameses, the second great wife Nefer Tari, where never Tari is wearing these flouncy in fashion clothes and she's offering to a goddess whose style is two thousand years old. And I think that's kind of the fun aspect of vintage fashion, one could say. And we know that second hand clothes were often bought up to then use his mummy wrappings, so all close 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 Ahnton commons Father, where goddesses are suddenly wearing modern fashion of the day, and there are statues in the tomb of two Uncommon 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. And at one point, I think in our earlier conversations you have talked about an influence of the Greeks that introduced new styles into the Egyptians. Is that something that happened at some point very influential on Egyptian style. That's an interesting thing to think about, that there are different styles that start to come to the four 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, kind of like we saw in the first three thousand years of Egyptian history. And how much new styles would have been introduced. So, for example, Cleopatra the seventh, she was the descendant of a Greek general, so she was 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. Oh yeah, this is great because I've never really thought about this influence of foreign dress in Egypt. Um. 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 kind of as as almost like an offering to the people, or as a way to reach out to the Egyptian people. Um. But I think you have a story about a certain Nubian prince that might get into this. I do. His name is heckan Neffer, and he was a contemporary of too uncommon he probably met to comment, if the pictorial evidence is to be believed. And Hacka, ever as a Nubian prince, is depicted in the tomb of a man named Hui, 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 heckan Effer was one of them. So in the tomb of WHOI the Nubian prince, hecan Effort is depicted wearing Egyptian white linen clothe thing with then Nubian leather garments over his Egyptian garments, and so many Gyptologists have said they're making him dressed like a barbarian. And I think that's totally unfair, because when heckan Effort 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 three thousand years old. Are we putting our modern conceptions or are we trying to understand what they're telling us with their clothing. And in the nineteen sixties, a Yale University mission found Heckan Effert's tomb in Nubia. So we not only have the picture of him in the tomb of WHOI, but we have his own tomb. And in his tomb he's shown dressed entirely in Egyptian and he has Egyptian funerary text 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 in Egyptian afterlife beliefs. So he's gonna 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. That's fascinating. And more on these fascinating intersections in the history of dress. For a word from our sponsors, 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 task with ensuring one's safe passage from this life to the next. Um. I find the dress of priests particularly interesting. Um. Sometimes you see them too picked in wearing animal skins, perhaps cheetah, maybe leopard across the chest um, and 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. Um. But could you talk about the wearing of animal skins in ancient Egypt? Definitely? The leopard skin is the marker of the sem priests. So the sem that's the title in ancient EGYPTI 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's 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 two inch n common and the sem priest will hold particular implement to the mouth of the coffin to the mummy, and then that enables the deceased to eat, drink and also enjoy love making in the afterlife. So this is a key ritual for enjoying the nether world to enjoying paradise for the ancient Egyptians. So that was the marker of of priest shore was the leopard skin. And that's actually one of the reasons why Nubia was so important, going back to Hecka Nefer 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. There almost always depicted in the banquet scenes, and you can imagine in the heat everyone's consuming beer and wine. Um they're enjoying music and various scantily clad musicians normally only wearing jewelry would be performing and going around serving the guests, and the mirror that was within these scented wax cones would melt over the wig during the course of the night. As you know, things heated up, you would smell better. Yet, and is it really neat that within the last ten years, archaeologists at a Marna excavating as 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. That's amazing. I wonder what they did with their wigs once they got the wax in the wig? Did they stay? Stay? Now you're just I'd probably watch. I mean, we have laundry lists title laundrymen in in Asian Egypt, so they were very concerned about maintaining cleanliness. So it's probably got dirty and then you washed it and then you got it all suited up for the next festival. Your hygiene and 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 they did. We have tweezers, we have raizors, we have all of the accouchrament that go along with maintaining personal appearance, in addition to obviously the makeup, the incense, and priests for example, we know bathed every day. So they had to I think a very different conception, as you mentioned, between what constituted a sanitary life in Asian Egypt in comparison to the rest of of of Europe. Say um, so we talked about this a little bit in conjunction with the pre stress um and funerary right, um. But what role did clothing play, um um for the actual deceased. There's around five thousand artifacts in King Tut's tomb, for instance, and and I believe many of these are jewelry and clothing. Absolutely so. We have wooden chess from the tomb of Todon Common that contained everything from his loin cloths to his gloves, kilts, probably a shirt he wore as a child. Um is all in his tomb. And it's not just the tomb of Toodon Common. There was another tomb excavated by an Italian mission around the turn of the last century. The Tomb of ca which is now in the Egyptian Museum in Turing. It's the only museum in the world outside of Egypt dedicated entirely to Egyptian antiquities. And there were stacks of linen, loin cloths, clothing, bedsheets, everything, And what I think is most cool about that material is some of the loin cloths have little laundry marks. So it was always said 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 that seems to be the best explanation of these little marks on the clothing. And which is really funny because this connects back to our Queen Alexandra episode um talking about the monograms on our laundry as well. So I guess the process of doing royal laundry hasn't really changed worldwide, indeed, probably. Thank you so much for being here with us today. That's all the time we have. But we hope, dressed listeners, that you take a moment to embrace your inner faraoh next time you get dressed. Thank you so much. Thank you. Remember you can find images to accompany each week's episode on Instagram at Dressed Underscore podcast. This is also our Twitter handle. You can find us on Facebook at Dressed podcast without the underscore, and if you'd like to email us, you can do so at Dressed at how stuffwork dot com. Don't it about our brand new merch store where you can get Dressed approved T shirts, mugs, notebooks, stickers and super cute topebacs. Just go to ww dot t public dot com, Forward, slash Dressed, and last but not least, thank you again to Dr Colleen Darnel and also our producers at how Stuff Works, Holly Fry and Casey Pegrum. Catch you next week. This episode of Dress was recorded at Mouth Media Network Studio in New York, powered by Sunheiser