Roman soldiers in Egypt

[Marcus Mummius]

Salve,

I was wondering if the Roman soldiers serving in Egypt in the 1st century AD would look different from those serving in, let's say Britain or Germany? Did the ones in Egypt adapt to the local fashion (or was Egypt so truly romanised that something like local fashion didn't exist anymore?).

Vale,

[Susanna]

Hi Marcus,

that is an interesting question indeed.

I made some research during the fact that we play some musical pieces from ancient Egypt (also Roman period) and some musical instruments from there.

Mostly the founds and remains of tunicae are white with clavi in different colours. The clavi are f.e. woven into the tunica, but also they have been cut off an (old?) tunica and stick onto another again.
The later tunicae clavi (4th cent. and after) have f.e. persons, myths themes and animals on.

The founds of Germany (I do not know many textile founds of Britain, cause I did not look it up until now) are mainly coloured (darker) and have clavi very rarely. But its because the founds are mainly also from Germans or Celts.

But because textile founds from 1st cent. are rare anyway, I do not know if that is of any historical fact.

What I can say else is that most frounds in Egypt have been Linen and in Germany of Wool.

[aitor iriarte]

Susanna,
There are Egyptian woollen textiles too and North-European surviving textiles are only woollen because linen does not survive inside the acidic peat-bog environments like the wool does.
European textiles were vividly coloured too but all of them appear brownish from the peat tanning.

Aitor

[Susanna]

Hi Aitor,

most founds include that of course, there were also wollen founds in Egypt (sometimes imported from Gallo-Roman) and other way round.
But because of written sources in Egypt the production of Linen clothes was more than of Wollen.

The fact that they appear brownish is true. But the original colours they had (chemical examination) were mostly dark, hard colours if you compare it to Egypt founds.

But anyway, maybe the soldiers brought their own traditional clothes with them.

If you need litearture about it, I would of course, look it up in my library tomorrow. ;-)

[L C Cinna]

may I ask what you mean by local fashion?

The Lagides had started to copy Roman military equipment earlier already Otherwise there were no real military improvements the Romans came across in Aegyptus which they hadn't already met in the other hellenistic countries.

Clothingwise the relevant classes were hellenized or hellenes so I think it would be hard to make out any specific clothing or fashion the Romans might have come across in Egypt only.

Some cults were adopted and imported to Rome like the cult of Isis, Serapis, a.s.o. The famous family portrait of the Severans shows Septimius Severus as Serapis:

[Graham Sumner]

Aitor is correct. Most documents found in Egypt refer to the Roman army using wool as their main source of material for tunics. Egypt was also supplying other parts of the Empire with clothing. Sadly we do not have comparable evidence from the Western Provinces.

Nevertheless at a later date, even in places like Britain what little evidence we have such as mosaics suggests the tunics appear to have the same types of decoration found on actual examples of tunic finds from Egypt, usually labeled as Coptic. This is in fact a very misleading term and generally means most non specialists ignore studying them. Some academics prefer late antique because the alternative term Byzantine is equally misleading. Why they can not say Late Roman is beyond me, it would make things far simpler.

As to the first century remember that Egypt had been conquered by Alexander the Great and was subsequently ruled by the Ptolemies before the Romans arrived. According to Sekunda There appears to have been some attempt to Romanise many successor state armies including those in Egypt. This is why one of the most famous pieces of evidence for Roman Army tunic colours the Palestrina mosaic can also be seen as evidence of Ptolemaic army colours. So do not expect the Egyptian army at that date to look like they have stepped straight out of the Ten Commandments!

Perhaps as a reaction to countless pictures of the Ermine Street Guard over the last thirty years, there is a now a tendency to say that the Roman army was not uniform. However this is still at odds with archaeological finds especially from the third century where if you swapped some of the finds found South Wales with Syria no one would be any wiser.

What we do have of course from Egypt are the amazing funeral portraits and experts now recognize some of these as being of ordinary soldiers not Royal rulers as previously thought. Some of them have sword baldrics worn over the left or their right shoulders which suggest either legionary or centurion ranks. There is a document from Egypt which records how a soldier ordered one of these portraits when he joined the army to send back to his family which shows that ordinary soldiers could afford them. Presumably soldiers in other eastern provinces had their portraits painted as well as the style is more Hellenistic rather than traditional Egyptian but we only have the evidence from Egypt.

Most paintings show soldiers in white tunics with red or black clavi. The cloaks are in a variety of colours including yellow brown, red, blue and possibly dark olive green. This ties in quite well with the evidence for colours that we have from elsewhere throughout the empire at all periods.

Susanna, recent research on the Thorsberg tunic concluded it was dyed bright red and the cloak was bright blue and white. I would not say these were dark colours.

Sources:

N.Sekunda. The Ptolemaic army. Montvert 1995
R.Alston. Soldier and Society in Roman Egypt. 1995
Sumner. Roman Military Clothing 1&2. 2002-3
E. Doxiadis. The Mysterious Fayum Portraits. 1995
N Lewis. Life in Egypt under Roman Rule. 1983

Graham.

[Susanna]

I looked up my books yesterday night again and they say that the same colores came out lighter or darker because there have been different types of woll.
In ancient times most sheeps-sorts have been darker in the north-alpin-area and they did not bleech the woll before coloring.
(They give it as an explanation and made experiments about it.)

Some technical textil literature:

Autorenkollektiv, Textile Faserstoffe, 1962 (Leipzig).
Autorenkollektiv, Textile Faserstoffe, 1967 (Leipzig).
Baumgarten, Hermine, Textile Rohstoffe und ihre Verarbeitung, 1950 (München).
Dascher, Ottfried, Das Textilgewerbe in Hessen-Kassel vom 16. Bis 19. Jahrh.1968 (Marburg).
Deutsche Schäfereizeitung, div. Jahrgänge (Stuttgart).
Geijer, Agnes, Birka III, Die Textilfunde aus den Gräbern, 1938 (Uppsala).
Hagen, Horst/Tödter, Hermann, Aus Flachs wird Leinen, 1985 (Rotenburg/Wümme).
Hägg, Inga, Die Textilfunde aus dem Hafen von Haithabu, in: Berichte über die Ausgrabungen in Haithabu 20, 1984 (Neumünster).
Hägg, Inga, Die Textilfunde aus der Siedlung und aus den Gräbern von Haithabu, in: Berichte über die Ausgrabungen in Haithabu 29, 1991 (Neumünster).
Harzheim, Gabriele, Das blaue Wunder, Rheinische Flachs- und Leinenproduktion im 19. Jahrh.,1989 (Köln).
Heubach, Helga, Faserpflanzen Flachs/ Hanf/ Nessel, Begleitheft zur Ausstellung März - Mai 1995.
Elsner, Hildegard, Wikinger Museum Haithabu: Schaufenster einer frühen Stadt, 1994 (Neumünster).
Flemming, Ernst, Das Textilwerk , bearbeitet von Renate Jaques, 1957 (Tübingen).
Fischbach, Friedrich, Die Geschichte der Textilkunst, 1883 (St.Gallen).
Janzweert, Edeltraud, Vom Leinsamen zum Leinenhemd, 1986 (Haiger).
Katalyse-Institut, Hrg. Hanf & Co. Die Renaissance der heimischen Faserpflanzen, 1996 (Göttingen).
Neuhaus, Wilhelm, Hersfelder Tuch, 1950 (Hersfeld).
Paschke, K. H. Die Wolle, 1950 (Stuttgart).
Richter, Wilhelm, Culturpflanzen und ihre Bedeutung für das wirtschaftliche Leben, 1890 (Leipzig).
Schiecke, Hans Erich, Wolle als textiler Rohstoff, 1979 (Berlin).
Schlichting, Marcus, Die Baumwolle aus: Erd- und Völkerkunde, 1874 (Leipzig).
Schuster, Karl, Die Rohstoffe für die Textilindustrie, 1953 (Stuttgart).
Timmermann, Irmgard, Die Seide Chinas, eine Kulturgeschichte am seidenen Faden, 1986 (Köln).
Tügel, Hanne, Der entpuppte Luxus, Chinas Seide, erschienen in Geo Nr. 1/92.
Wagner, Erich, Die textilen Rohstoffe, Natur- und Chemiefaserstoffe, 1964 (Wuppertal).
Weisthum der Gesetze, Ordnungen und Vorschriften, von den ältesten Zeiten bis hierher... 1803 (Hadamar).
Windeck-Schulze, Karin, Faserstoffe, 1940 (Frankfurt a.M.).

I also found this:

R. J. Forbes : Studies in Ancient Technology 4 ; 1964.

A. Neuburger : Die Technik des Altertums ; 1981.

H. Blümner : Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Künste bei den Griechen und Römern 1 ; 1912.


Seems also that the tecniques of weeving brought out different colours with the same grammar -colour.

@Graham: I think I have to order your books today. :wink:


For Britain:

Wild, J.P., "The Textile Industries of Roman Britain", in:
Britannia, Vol. 33, 2002, pp. 1-42.

Wild, J. P., "Clothing in the North-West Provinces of the Roman Empire", in: Bonner Jahrbücher 168, Bonn 1970.

Wild, J.P., "Textile manufacture in the northern Roman provinces", Cambridge (1970).

Wild, J.P., "Clothes from the Roman Empire: Barbarians & Romans", in: Bender Jørgensen, L., Magnus, B. & Munksgaard, E. (Hrg.): Archaeological Textiles - Report from the 2nd NESAT Symposium, Copenhagen (1988).

Taylor, G., "Reds and purples: from the classical world to pre-conquest Britain", in: Walton, Penelope & Wild, John-P. (Hg.):. Textiles in Northern Archaeology - Textile Symposium in York, London (1990).

[MeinPanzer]

may I ask what you mean by local fashion?

The Lagides had started to copy Roman military equipment earlier already Otherwise there were no real military improvements the Romans came across in Aegyptus which they hadn't already met in the other hellenistic countries.

I take it you mean Nick Sekunda's theory that the Seleucids and Ptolemies reformed their armies after the Roman fashion in the 2nd C. BC. This theory is almost entirely false and the Ptolemies did not equip their soldiers after the Roman fashion.

[Martin Moser]

Susanna, Graham, laudes for you both for listing those sources! (not that I wouldn't believe you without, but this way I can look things up for my own if I feel I need to ...)

[Marcus Mummius]

Indeed, thanks for the sources! Laudes from me too.

Lol wouldn't it be funny to see a bunch of hardened Roman soldiers stationed in Egypt running around with black kohl around their eyes? (I've read the kohl protects against eye infections, probably caused by sand...)

Vale,
Jef