Wardrobe of a boy king
As part of her exploration into Ancient Egyptian attire, Dr Gillian Bowen is casting her expert eye over the wardrobe of one of history’s most famous leaders: King Tutankhamun.
Dr Bowen, who is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University’s Centre for Archaeology and Ancient History, has a research interest in ancient textiles and the archaeology of early Christianity.
Every year she undertakes archaeological field work from Monash excavations in Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis and her work has put Monash University at the forefront of this exciting area of archaeology.
“Monash University’s excavations at ancient Kellis in Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis have yielded vast quantities of textiles and numerous items of footwear from the late Roman period (4th century CE)” explained Dr Bowen. While this is a different age to King Tutankhamun’s, her expertise in textiles provides a connection for Dr Bowen.
King Tutankhamun’s wardrobe is the only substantial collection of items from a pharaonic wardrobe to survive, and includes clothing from everyday life as well as ceremonial occasions, representing the height of fashion in the late 18th dynasty – the period ranging from about 1550 to 1295 BCE.
As part of a lecture on the clothing to be held at the Melbourne Museum, Dr Bowen will be showing both the surviving wardrobe and supplemented pictorial representations of the clothing (for items too fragile to be shown).
As a specialist in textiles, she has been able to compare King Tutankhamun’s collection to clothing from the late Roman period and has noticed the likeness between the clothing from the two eras.
“The tunics and sandals from Kellis are remarkably similar to those from Tutankhamun’s tomb, although of much inferior quality and lacking the elaborate decoration. This indicates that there has been little change in the technology over the millennia,” Said Dr Bowen.
The excavator of the tomb, Howard Carter, who discovered it in 1922, understood the archaeological significance of the textiles, writing at the time “The material from this tomb will be of extreme importance to the history of textile art, and it needs very careful study.”
Despite this, the clothing was neglected until 1992, when Dr Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, a British scientist and director of the project, and her team, with the support of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, picked up where Carter left off. Since then, as Dr Bowen’s interest demonstrates, the clothing of the Pharaonic Period has achieved the scientific status that Howard Carter knew it deserved.
Dr Bowen will be holding a lecture on Tutankhamun’s wardrobe at Melbourne Museum. The event will take place on Tuesday 26 July as part of the Tutankhamun Tuesdays public lecture program.