Ancient Socks??

[corvideye]

To be honest, I don't care that much whether this mosaic depicts Alexander the Great or not. What gets me is that these guys are wearing stripey socks!

Comments

[young-raven.livejournal.com]

And it looks less like "using up scraps of wool" and more fashion statement! :D

[kareina.livejournal.com]

I can't zoom in on the phone app to see the socks, but reading this reminds me of an article in the Archeological Textile Newsletter about a woman's hypothesis that the Greek pottery that shows men with patterned legs could be a deptiction of hose made from sprang. She showed examples in the article of stripes, diamonds and spots all made by sprang. Of course, striped socks made from sprang would not be a good way to use up ends of yarn.

[corvideye.livejournal.com]

Yes, that was a very cool article, and I think she's onto something. These could easily be socks, though. There is coptic knitting at that point.

[layla-lilah.livejournal.com]

There are quite a few surviving knit *cotton* socks with complex patterns (stranded color knitting) from Egypt from the Fatimid thru the Mamluk periods, that is, after the Islamic conquest.

There is no knitting from the Greco-Roman period in Egypt. For the Roman period like the mosaic, the socks are made by nalbinding. There are a number that are extant that are striped, but those are children's socks, but no reason there couldn't have been some for adults.

[layla-lilah.livejournal.com]

Here is one of those extant striped socks
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=155676&partId=1

[layla-lilah.livejournal.com]

I can share links to socks in museums, but i see that posting links here get marked as spam and i don't know how to hide them