Wool of the 14th Century BC from Tell el-Amarna, Egypt

Abstract

THE type of sheep kept in ancient Egypt has been deduced mainly from pictures. In the Old Kingdom (2700–2200 BC) black, white and piebald animals are depicted with corkscrew horns1; the coat was apparently short suggesting an outer coat of kemp, and an under coat of wool as in modern African so-called “hair” sheep, the coat of which is little different from the double coat of wild sheep. The picture chronology indicates that in the Middle Kingdom (2134–1647 BC) this sheep was replaced by a woolly one with the usual horn shape2. I have described3 a sample of raw wool from the Old Kingdom which, although coarse, did not have the discontinuous diameter distribution expected in a double-coated sheep (Table 1). I have examined samples from the agricultural museum in Cairo, comprising some raw wool and a length of yarn. They were from the temple stores of Akhenaten at Tell el-Amarna; this pharoah lived during the 14th century BC, that is, in the 18th Dynasty (1570–1320 BC) which was in the New Kingdom.