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

[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