The History of Clothing

Ancient · Middle East & North Africa · 3000 BCE - 500 CE

Ancient Middle Eastern Clothing

From Mesopotamian wool fleece garments to Egyptian linen mastery and Persian tailored trousers, the ancient Middle East pioneered textile traditions that shaped dress across the world — what Sumerians, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Persians wore, and how we know.

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The ancient Middle East was home to some of the world's first cities, and to some of its first textile industries. Between roughly 3000 BCE and 500 CE, the peoples of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia, and Iran developed clothing traditions that ranged from the sheer pleated linen of the pharaohs to the fringed wool of Assyrian kings and the tailored trousers and coats of the Persian Empire. Two broad approaches coexisted: draped clothing — wrapped rectangles of wool or linen — and, later, sewn and fitted clothing that the Persians spread across their vast empire.

How We Know What Ancient Middle Eastern People Wore

Evidence for ancient Middle Eastern clothing comes from a remarkable range of sources:

  • Egyptian tombs, where the dry climate preserved actual garments; the tomb of Tutankhamun alone held hundreds of textiles, including tunics, loincloths, shawls, and gloves
  • Sculpture and reliefs, such as Sumerian votive statues and the detailed palace reliefs of the Assyrian kings
  • Tomb paintings in Egypt showing people of every class at work and at leisure
  • Cuneiform tablets recording textile production, wool rations, and trade in cloth
  • Textile finds from desert sites such as Palmyra and Dura-Europos in Syria, which preserved wool and silk fabrics from the Roman period

Much of this evidence, as usual, shows kings, gods, and officials. But Egyptian tomb paintings and Mesopotamian ration lists also reveal what ordinary workers wore and how their clothing was made.

Mesopotamian Dress

Sumerian limestone statue of a standing female worshiper, her garment draped over one shoulder Standing female worshiper, Sumerian, ca. 2600–2500 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0.

In ancient Mesopotamia, one of the earliest and most distinctive garments was the kaunakes, a skirt or wrap made from sheepskin with the fleece left on, or later woven to imitate tufted fleece. Sumerian statues from the third millennium BCE show men and women wearing these layered, petal-like skirts. Men often went bare-chested, while women draped a length of cloth over one shoulder.

As weaving technology advanced, wool and linen fabrics replaced raw hides, and draped rectangular cloths became the norm. The shawl — a large rectangle of fabric wrapped around the body — was worn by Assyrian and Babylonian elites, often richly decorated with geometric and floral motifs that may have been woven or embroidered.

Mesopotamia ran on wool. Temple and palace workshops employed large numbers of women weavers, and cuneiform records show wool being issued as rations and cloth being traded as far as Anatolia. Assyrian merchants of the early second millennium BCE carried textiles by donkey caravan from the city of Assur to trading colonies such as Kanesh in central Anatolia.

Assyrian and Babylonian Dress

The reliefs of Assyrian palaces show royal and elite men in long, short-sleeved tunics under heavy fringed shawls wrapped in a spiral around the body. Fringe appears to have been a mark of rank. Kings wore a tall, truncated conical hat, and men of standing wore their hair and beards long, carefully curled and oiled. Soldiers wore short tunics, belts, and boots or sandals, with pointed helmets.

An Assyrian law code from the late second millennium BCE required married women to veil themselves in public, while forbidding enslaved women and prostitutes to do so. It is one of the earliest known laws about veiling, and it used clothing to mark a woman's social and legal standing.

Egyptian Dress

Nineteenth-century illustration of ancient Egyptian priests, warriors, and kings in linen kilts, robes, and crowns A 19th-century reconstruction, not a period image. Albert Kretschmer and Carl Rohrbach, Costumes of All Nations (1882). Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

In Egypt, the warm climate and the abundance of flax made linen the fabric of choice for nearly all classes of society. Wool was used much less; the Greek historian Herodotus reported that woolen garments were not taken into temples or buried with the dead. Egyptian garments were remarkably consistent across millennia.

Men's Clothing

Men wore the shendyt, a wrapped linen kilt tied at the waist. Laborers, farmers, and fishermen often wore only a simple loincloth or short kilt, or nothing at all while working. Pharaohs wore finely pleated versions of the shendyt, and during the New Kingdom, elite men layered long, transparent pleated robes over their kilts.

Women's Clothing

Women wore the kalasiris, a close-fitting sheath dress with one or two shoulder straps — the name is borrowed from the Greek historian Herodotus, who used it for a fringed linen tunic worn by Egyptians, and modern writers apply it loosely to the sheath dress. During the New Kingdom, elite women wore full, sheer pleated linen robes knotted beneath the breast.

The finest royal linen was woven so sheer it was nearly transparent, a testament to the extraordinary skill of Egyptian weavers. Pleating, starching, and draping techniques added variety and formality to an otherwise simple wardrobe.

Wigs, Cosmetics, and Jewelry

Much of Egyptian display was carried not by clothing but by what went with it. Many elite Egyptians of both sexes kept their hair cropped or shaved and wore wigs, the finest made of human hair, for formal occasions. Men and women alike lined their eyes with kohl, a dark cosmetic that Egyptians also seem to have valued for blocking the glare of the sun and repelling flies. The broad collar, a wide necklace of beads and gold, was one of the most characteristic pieces of Egyptian jewelry. Royal regalia included the striped nemes headcloth and the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.

The Levant and Anatolia

Along the eastern Mediterranean coast, clothing reflected the region's position between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Egyptian paintings, such as the procession of Asiatic traders in the tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan, depict Levantine visitors in brightly patterned robes, probably of wool, that stand out sharply against the white linen of the Egyptians. The Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon produced the famous purple dye extracted from murex sea snails, which became the most prestigious color in the ancient Mediterranean.

In Anatolia, the Hittites of the second millennium BCE are shown in long robes or short belted tunics, tall pointed caps, and shoes with upturned toes — often explained as practical footwear for a mountainous land. Hebrew scripture describes the fringes, or tassels, that Israelite men were commanded to wear on the corners of their garments, a tradition that survives in Jewish prayer shawls today.

Persian Innovation

Limestone relief from Persepolis of a bearded man in a rounded cap and belted tunic walking in a procession Relief of a figure in a procession, Persepolis, Achaemenid, ca. 405–359 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0.

The rise of the Persian Empire in the sixth century BCE brought a revolution in clothing construction. Unlike the draped and wrapped garments of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Persians wore tailored and sewn clothing — fitted tunics, trousers, and sleeved coats. The Greeks called the Persian trousers anaxyrides and regarded them as a mark of foreignness. This was clothing designed for a horse-riding people, practical for the demands of cavalry warfare and the colder climates of the Iranian plateau.

Persian court dress was famously elaborate. The kandys, a long-sleeved coat draped over the shoulders like a cape, was a mark of high status, though scholars still debate exactly which garment in Persian art the Greek word refers to. Fabrics were dyed in rich colors — purples, blues, and crimsons — and decorated with embroidery and appliqué.

The reliefs of Persepolis, the ceremonial capital built by Darius I and his successors, show two styles of Persian dress side by side: long, flowing, pleated court robes and the fitted riding outfit of tunic and trousers. The same reliefs show delegations from across the empire bringing gifts, each in its own national dress — an unusually detailed catalog of ancient clothing from Egypt to India.

The Persian preference for trousers and fitted garments would later influence Greek, Roman, and Central Asian dress traditions, representing a fundamental alternative to the draped clothing of the Mediterranean world.

Parthians, Romans, and the Silk Road

After Alexander the Great conquered Persia in the fourth century BCE, Greek dress spread through the Middle East among the ruling elites, but the Iranian riding costume never disappeared. The Parthians, who ruled Iran from the third century BCE, wore long-sleeved tunics and loose, heavily pleated trousers, and their art shows the outfit in rich detail.

Under the Parthians and their successors, the Sasanians, the Middle East sat at the center of the trade routes linking China and the Mediterranean. Chinese silk passed through Persian hands on its way west, and Sasanian weavers developed their own luxurious patterned silks, often decorated with roundels containing animals and hunting scenes; because Sogdian and other Central Asian workshops wove similar designs, scholars find it hard to say exactly where many surviving examples were made. These designs influenced textiles from Byzantium to China, and they reappear in the medieval Islamic textile tradition.

In the Roman-ruled cities of the region, such as Palmyra, funerary portraits show local elites wearing a mix of Greek and Roman draped clothing and Iranian-style trousers and tunics, often heavily embroidered — a visual record of a region where East and West met.

Common Myths About Ancient Middle Eastern Clothing

"Ancient Egyptians dressed in plain white." Linen was usually left white or off-white, but Egyptians decorated their dress with colored beadwork, broad collars, sashes, and jewelry. Surviving garments from royal tombs also include patterned and colored textiles.

"Trousers came from Europe." Trousers developed among the horse-riding peoples of the steppe and Iran. Greek and Roman writers considered them a distinctly eastern, and barbarian, garment.

"Veiling began with Islam." Veiling predates Islam by well over a thousand years in the Middle East. Assyrian law regulated it in the second millennium BCE, and Greek, Roman, and Byzantine women also covered their heads in public.

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