Ancient Middle Eastern Clothing

This survey covers dress in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia, and Iran. Its evidence includes Egyptian linen garments, Mesopotamian draped clothing, and Persian court robes alongside fitted riding outfits.^2,13,7 At Persepolis, reliefs record both draped court dress and trousered cavalry dress; these are overlapping styles, rather than a simple division between nations.⁷

What Did People Wear in the Ancient Middle East?

There was no single ancient Middle Eastern outfit. These examples show how dress differed between societies; the sections below explain the evidence and the changes over time.

Society	Garments and fabrics	Read more
Sumer and Mesopotamia	Tufted kaunakes skirts and wraps; later, woven wool garments and fringed shawls.12,14	Mesopotamian dress
Egypt	Linen kilts, sheath dresses, and pleated garments; jewelry and wigs completed elite dress.15	Egyptian dress
Achaemenid Persia	Draped court robes alongside fitted tunics, trousers, and sleeved coats suited to riding.7	Persian dress

How We Know What Ancient Middle Eastern People Wore

The following sources provide evidence for ancient Middle Eastern clothing:

• Egyptian tombs, which preserved actual garments; the tomb of Tutankhamun alone held hundreds of textiles, including tunics, loincloths, shawls, and gloves^1,2
• Sculpture and reliefs, such as Sumerian votive statues and the detailed palace reliefs of the Assyrian kings^14,22
• Tomb paintings in Egypt showing people of every class at work and at leisure¹⁵
• Cuneiform tablets recording textile production, wool rations, and trade in cloth^3,21
• Textile finds from desert sites such as Palmyra in Syria, whose tower tombs yielded more than 500 textiles, close to 100 of them silk⁹

Alongside images of rulers and deities, Egyptian paintings depict workers, and Mesopotamian administrative records document weaving labor and wool rations.^15,21

Mesopotamian Dress

For individual statues, textile production, and merchant-family letters, explore Mesopotamian clothing.

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.¹² Sumerian statues from the third millennium BCE show men and women wearing these layered, petal-like skirts.^12,14 Men often went bare-chested, while women draped a length of cloth over one shoulder.^13,14

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 fringed and richly decorated; the Assyrian palace reliefs carve the embroidery of court dress in fine detail.^14,22

Mesopotamia ran on wool, and women spun and wove most of its cloth.¹³ Under the Third Dynasty of Ur (2112–2004 BCE), groups of women weavers, some more than a hundred strong, worked for the king, the provincial governor, and a high priestess, and the standard rations issued to workers included wool as well as barley and oil.²¹ 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.³ For the earlier story of flax, linen, and the first wool in the region, see prehistoric Middle Eastern clothing.

Assyrian and Babylonian Dress

Assyrian clothing was mostly wool, even for kings, and like the Babylonians the Assyrians favored fringed garments in bright colors.¹⁴ On the palace reliefs, dress and jewelry mark rank: the king is recognizable by his tall tiara, shaped like a truncated cone, and rosette bracelets were worn only by the king and the most important members of the court.²² Sculptors carved the men's hair and beards with individual curls, and Mesopotamian men and women oiled and perfumed their hair.^22,14 Neo-Assyrian soldiers wore boots with leather breeches or cloth leggings, and tunics belted at the waist.¹⁴

A collection of Assyrian laws, first written down around 1400–1300 BCE, required married women to veil themselves in public, while forbidding enslaved women and prostitutes to do so.⁴ The law used clothing to mark a woman's social and legal standing.⁴

Egyptian Dress

In Egypt, linen woven from locally grown flax was the fabric of choice for nearly all classes of society.¹⁵ Wool was used much less; the Greek historian Herodotus reported that woolen garments were not taken into temples or buried with the dead.⁵ The basic forms of Egyptian garments changed relatively little across millennia.¹⁵

Men's Clothing

Men wore a wrapped linen kilt fastened at the waist. Laborers wore a simple kilt; shepherds, ferrymen, and fishermen mainly wore only a simple sash, and many worked naked, at least until the Middle Kingdom.¹⁵ Kings wore a finely pleated royal kilt, the shendyt,²⁷ and during the New Kingdom elite men layered sheer, elaborately pleated garments over their kilts.¹⁵

Women's Clothing

Women wore the kalasiris, a close-fitting sheath dress with 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.^5,15 During the New Kingdom, elite women wore sheer gowns of light linen, often with a sash or a short cape.¹⁵

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.¹⁵ For a closer look at the Tarkhan Dress, royal linen, Tutankhamun's wardrobe, and how tomb paintings can mislead, see our guide to ancient Egyptian clothing.

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, made of human hair, for formal occasions.^15,20 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.^11,20 Nobles wore the broad collar, a wide neck piece, and the upper classes favored jewelry made of gold.¹⁵ Royal regalia included the striped nemes headcloth and the double crown, which joined the white crown of Upper Egypt to the red crown of Lower Egypt.^2,25

The Levant and Anatolia

Along the eastern Mediterranean coast, clothing reflected the region's position between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Egyptian paintings record how Levantine visitors looked: a scene painted around 1890 BCE in a tomb at Beni Hasan shows thirty-seven "Asiatics" from Syria-Canaan arriving with their donkeys, set apart from Egyptians by their beards, headbands, and style of clothing.²³ 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.¹⁶

In Anatolia, thirteenth-century BCE Hittite reliefs at the rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya show the king in a long coat and gods in short belted tunics, horned pointed hats, and shoes that curl up at the toe.^6,24 Hebrew scripture describes the fringes, or tassels, that Israelites were commanded to wear on the corners of their garments.¹⁷ The tallit, the Jewish prayer shawl, still carries tassels at its four corners in fulfillment of that commandment.²⁶

Persian Innovation

Compare court robes, trousers, and the interpretation of Persepolis figures in ancient Persian clothing.

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.^7,8 The Greeks called the Persian trousers anaxyrides, remarked on their bright colors, and even mocked them.⁷ The outfit came from the Eurasian steppe, where the climate swung sharply and life depended on cattle and on the horse, especially in war.⁷

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.⁷ Fabrics were dyed in rich colors — purples, blues, and crimsons — and decorated with embroidery and appliqué.⁷

The reliefs of Persepolis, the Achaemenid 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.^18,7 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.⁷

The Persian preference for trousers and fitted garments outlasted the empire itself and remained a lasting alternative to the draped clothing of the Mediterranean world.⁸

Parthians, Romans, and the Silk Road

Alexander the Great conquered Persia in the fourth century BCE, but neither his conquest nor the Seleucid rule that followed changed Persian dress; if anything, Persian styles spread and sometimes influenced the dress of the Greeks.⁸ Under the Parthians, who ruled Iran from about 250 BCE, trousers and sleeved coats became common dress from northern India to Syria, worn with a fitted jacket or a loose tunic, both belted.⁸

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 many middlemen on its way west, some of it by way of India and the Persian Gulf, and Sasanian weavers developed their own luxurious patterned silks, often decorated with roundels containing animals and hunting scenes; because similar designs may also have been woven in Central Asia and China, scholars find it hard to say exactly where many surviving examples were made.^9,10 The designs were copied as far away as China, and they outlived the fall of the Sasanians, reappearing in the medieval Islamic textile tradition.¹⁰

In the Roman-ruled cities of the region, such as Palmyra, funerary reliefs blend Roman and Parthian traditions: a wealthy man reclines at a banquet in a classical pose but wears Parthian-style trousers and a pleated tunic — a visual record of a region where East and West met.¹⁹

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.^2,15

"Trousers came from Europe." Trousers developed among the horse-riding peoples of the steppe and Iran. Greek writers treated them as a distinctly Persian garment, and Greek comedy mocked them.^7,8

"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 a royal letter from Mari on the Euphrates, written in the eighteenth century BCE, already tells a woman to veil herself.⁴

For a focused production guide, see how ancient Egyptians made linen.

Sources

1. Tutankhamun and Decorative Needlework (Egypt) — Textile Research Centre, Leiden.Reference 1
2. Royal Couture — Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, RAWI Magazine, 2021.
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3. Housewives, Weavers and Businesswomen: Assyrian Women from Assur and Kanesh — Cécile Michel, ANE Today, 2021.
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4. Veiling in Ancient Near Eastern Legal Contexts — Frederick Mario Fales, in Headscarf and Veiling (Edizioni Ca' Foscari), 2021.
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5. Herodotus, Histories 2.81 — trans. G. C. Macaulay, via Lexundria.
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6. Twelve Gods of the Underworld, Yazilikaya Hittite Sanctuary — Carole Raddato, World History Encyclopedia, 2019.Reference 1
7. Clothing ii. In the Median and Achaemenid periods — A. Shapur Shahbazi, Encyclopaedia Iranica.
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8. Clothing iii. In the Arsacid period — Trudy S. Kawami, Encyclopaedia Iranica.
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9. From China to Palmyra: the value of silk — Marta Żuchowska, Światowit, 2013.
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10. Les textiles de l'Asie centrale du 5ème au 9ème siècle: énigmes et hypothèses — Gilles Béguin, Amis du Musée Cernuschi, 2022.
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11. Ancient Egyptian make-up — Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.Reference 1
12. Kaunakes — Fashion History Timeline, Fashion Institute of Technology, 2020.
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13. Sumerian — Regan de Loggans, Fashion History Timeline, Fashion Institute of Technology, 2018.
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14. Fashion & Dress in Ancient Mesopotamia — Joshua J. Mark, World History Encyclopedia, 2026.
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15. Fashion & Dress in Ancient Egypt — Joshua J. Mark, World History Encyclopedia, 2017.
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16. Tyrian Purple — Mark Cartwright, World History Encyclopedia, 2016.Reference 1
17. Numbers 15:38 — The JPS Tanakh: Gender-Sensitive Edition, via Sefaria.Reference 1
18. Persepolis — UNESCO World Heritage Centre.Reference 1
19. Tomb Relief (1964.359) — Cleveland Museum of Art.Reference 1
20. Cosmetics, Perfume, & Hygiene in Ancient Egypt — Joshua J. Mark, World History Encyclopedia, 2017.
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21. a2-ges-gar-ra during the Ur III period: an early example of ta-ra-si-ja — Richard Firth, in KO-RO-NO-WE-SA (Ariadne Supplement Series 5), University of Crete, 2024.
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22. The Sargon relief — Khorsabad, the City of Sargon, French Ministry of Culture.
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23. NELC 150, Slide 1: Beni Hasan wall painting — Jeffrey H. Tigay, Introduction to the Bible, University of Pennsylvania.Reference 1
24. Hittite relief of the God Sharruma and King Tudhaliya — Carole Raddato, World History Encyclopedia, 2019.Reference 1
25. Head of a Ptolemaic King — Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University.Reference 1
26. Tallit — Encyclopaedia Judaica, via Jewish Virtual Library, 2008.Reference 1
27. Statue of Amenhotep II (JE 36680) — The Global Egyptian Museum.Reference 1