Domestic Textile Production in Dakhleh Oasis in the Fourth Century AD

Abstract

Ancient Kellis, modern Ismant el-Kharab is located in the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt's western desert. The main occupation of the village was from the early to late Roman period (late 1st century to the beginning of the 5th century AD). Excavated as part of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, the site has revealed textual and archaeological evidence from which a detailed picture of life can be painted. To date, the main publications of the village's finds have focussed on the textual remains, of literary and documentary texts in Coptic, Greek, and Syriac. 1 A comparable publication of the archaeological evidence from the site is still pending, but the context of the surviving evidence is clear. 2 Many of the documents were found in House 3, left there after the abandonment of the village around the turn of the 5th century, and reflect the concerns of several generations of its residents. 3 One reason for the abundance of textual sources is the volume of written communication between individuals in Kellis and others in the Nile Valley, mostly members of the community who had travelled there for a variety of reasons. This Oasis-Valley duality is fundamental to understanding many of the documents, as well as the realities of life for Kellites. The distinction is made clear through reference to the Oasis (ⲟⲩⲁϩⲉ) and the Valley ("Egypt", ⲕⲏⲙⲉ) and the importance of location will be raised at several points in the following discussion.The Manichaean nature of the community, for which the texts are the primary evidence, has received the greatest amount of scholarly attention to date. 4 Yet, there is vast potential for 1 To date, eight volumes of texts from Kellis have been published: O.Kellis (Greek ostraca), P.Kellis I (Greek documentary papyri), P.Kellis II (Coptic, Greek, and Syriac literary texts), P.Kellis III (the Kellis Isocrates Codex), P.Kellis IV (the Kellis Agricultural Account Book), P.Kellis V (Coptic documentary texts), P.Kellis VI (Coptic, Greek, and Syriac literary texts), and P.Kellis VII (Coptic documentary texts). Throughout this article, I use these sigla, as included in the Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic, and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets, updated online at papyri.info/docs/checklist. It should be stressed that many studies on the Kellis material use other sigla, e.g., P.Kell.Copt., as included in the original editions. However, the Checklist represents the disciplinary standard and should be used for all discussions of the textual corpus. Note that the translations used in this article are primarily those of the original editors, with only minor modifications. Concerning the date of the texts from the site, while some Greek documents date to the end of the 3rd century, the majority of the relevant material dates to the 4th century. The nature of the sources, which predominantly consists of letters, means that individual texts can rarely be dated more precisely than this. As a result of the differential ability to date the sources, I have not provided dates for individual items. 2 Field re...

Tackling the technical history of the textiles of El-Deir, Kharga Oasis, the Western Desert of Egypt

“…In this way, we can calculate the thread 38. About the economy of textiles and textile production within the oasis context see also the article by Jennifer Cromwell, in this volume (Cromwell 2020). 39.…”