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Popular culture often borrows (sometimes too literally) from highly stylised pharaonic art when recreating what most of us would recognise as the ‘costume’ of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. But here is an actual item of royal clothing of exactly the type shown in contemporary depictions of the king once named on it: a long belt or girdle that was wrapped several times around the waist and ended in projecting flap – an apron or sporran – at the front. This once carried the inked cartouche of Ramesses III (c.1186 1153 BC), but ill-advised modern conservation treatment caused the inscription to degrade.
The belt appeared on the antiquities market at Luxor during the 1850s and was bought by English collector Reverend Henry Stobart. There is a good chance that it derived from the burial goods of Ramesses III himself, carefully buried with him in his tomb (KV11) in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb had been open and explored for well over a century before the belt was purchased by Stobart. It is, however, possible that the linen had been included in another burial, where cloth that had touched a divine form – for example, a statue of a deity or perhaps the body of the living king – was an especially valued piece used to swathe the deceased.
What makes this object so rare is the condition in which it has survived. Even Tutankhamun’s ‘wardrobe’ revealed by Howard Carter’s team in the 1920s had not fared nearly as well, nor did the remaining pieces of linen clothing from that tomb display such intricate designs. The Ramesses belt is woven from dyed linen fibres, using a warp-faced braid technique, and features very finely detailed and repeating ankh (‘life’) signs. The pattern has been replicated several times in modern times, and it has been estimated that the original belt must have taken between three and four months to complete.
Images: J P Phillips (top); R B Partridge (bottom)
