Minoan kilt reconstruction

Here it is: a Minoan kilt based on the ones shown in the procession fresco from Knossos.  It's decorated with embroidery in an effort to demonstrate that embroidery techniques can produce the kind of textiles shown in Bronze Age Aegean art.

Here's the fresco for comparison:

Knossos procession fresco Group C, image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Kilts had cultural significance for the Minoans, and giving a young man his (first?) kilt was a Big Deal. It was such an important life event that it was recorded on seal stones.  Most kilts in Minoan and Mycenaean art are fairly plain, but the Knossos procession fresco shows an important cultural event, most likely a seasonal religious festival, and the people involved are wearing special clothes for the occasion.

Ornately decorated kilts may also have been reserved for specific members of society, though in theory anyone could own a kilt like this as long as someone in their social circle possessed the time and technical skills needed to make one.  One of the things this project taught me is that making a kilt this way is not particularly difficult, it's just time consuming.

I embroidered the kilt before I cut it out, then finished the edges by simply turning them under and stitching them down, which may or may not be something the Minoans would have done.  It would also be possible to line the kilt, or even just leave the edges raw since fulled wool doesn't fray.

Fabric edge folded under and stitched with linen thread.

Close up of the kilt.  Pictured: plied cord used to tie it round the waist and traces of chalk left from drawing the embroidery design.  The plied cord is conjectural, but was a common method of fastening clothes in the Bronze Age Aegean.

Here's what it looks like laid out flat.

The kilts in the procession fresco are a little unusual.  As far as I'm aware that tapered border at the bottom doesn't occur anywhere else in Minoan art; decorative borders are common, but not tapering to points at each end.  Additionally, all the kilts in the procession fresco are made in the same colours (blue with yellow stripes or yellow with blue stripes), with the same overall design and decorative features.  If the trade delegation shown in Rekhmire's tomb is anything to go by, Minoan clothing was normally much less uniform than this, even for important occasions.  This suggests the procession fresco kilts were a specific style of garment related to the event shown in the fresco, and potentially even made specially for this event.

Where exactly does all this get us?  Sure, this is a garment the Minoans could have made, but is it a garment they're likely to have made?  Unfortunately there isn't enough evidence to answer that question conclusively.  I can say this reconstruction is consistent with what we know about the Knossos textile industry, and solves an important problem with making the procession fresco kilts - specifically, the fact that the tapered stripes at the bottom would be extremely challenging to weave even for an experienced weaver using sophisticated techniques.  So this is a plausible interpretation, but not a definitive one.

Important public service announcement: if you think you might like to make an embroidered wool kilt, I strongly recommend  using a dust mask.  Yes, a dust mask, like you would use for sanding down a surface before painting.  You may laugh, but trust me, your sinuses will thank you for it.  The wool constantly sheds tiny fibers that will do unspeakable things to your nasal membranes.

HSM details

The Challenge:  Specific to a Time (of day or year).  The men pictured on the Knossos procession fresco were participating in a festival, which would have happened at a specific time of the year.  The similar colour and design of their kilts, which appears to have been unusual, suggests they may have been made specifically for the event shown in the fresco.

Material: Half a meter of fulled tabby wool.

Pattern: Based on Dr. Bernice Jones' research.

Year: 1470 - 1315 BCE.

Notions:  Wool yarn for embroidery, linen thread, plied linen cord.

How historically accurate is it?  The purpose of this reconstruction was to demonstrate that embroidery techniques can produce textiles consistent with those shown in Minoan art.  But we don’t have enough information about the textiles shown on the Knossos frescoes to know for sure how they were made and this is one of several possible interpretations.

Hours to complete:  I lost count, but I think somewhere around 60-70.

First worn:  Round the house after I finished hemming it.

Total cost: $45.

Minoan textile with embroidery

Previously, I discussed the idea that the textile designs shown in Minoan and Mycenaean art were not always woven directly into the cloth.  The designs shown on Minoan frescoes can easily be made using embroidery techniques, so I’ve started a reconstruction of one of the kilts shown on the Knossos procession fresco using embroidery techniques.  The results are promising, and consistent with Linear B evidence for textile finishing processes.

When it's finished, the embroidered cloth will be a kilt like these ones shown on the procession fresco from Knossos:

Knossos procession fresco, group C.  Image from Wikimedia Commons.

The procession fresco is life size and painted with a lot of attention to detail, which means it's easy to see what the fabric designs looked like.  I'm doing the kilt on the far right of procession fresco group C (pictured above), with a pattern of tessellated quatrefoils on a blue background.  Although this part of the fresco is not well preserved there is enough of the quatrefoil design left to see what it looked like, and the decoration at the bottom of the kilt can be reconstructed with reasonable certainty based on better preserved parts of the fresco.

I’ve used embroidery stitches found on Tutankhamun’s clothing to make the design: stem stitch, running stitch, and chain stitch.  King Tut lived either around the time the procession fresco was painted, or about a hundred years later (Aegean chronology is not an exact science) so his clothing is roughly contemporaneous with the procession fresco kilts.  If the Minoans were using embroidery, it's reasonable to assume they would have been using the same sort of stitches used in the Near East around the same time.

I picked the quatrefoil pattern in part because I think it would be difficult to weave.  Brocade techniques don‘t adapt well to designs that require long thin straight lines.   These are better suited to embroidery, so I chose this design for my proof of concept.

All the kilts in the fresco have two stripes of contrasting colour which bear a superficial (and probably not coincidental) resemblance to the bands of fringe pictured on women’s kilts, but in this case analysis of the stripes reveals they are not fringes.  They taper to points at each end, which is just not possible for a woven fringe.  Based on comparison with Near Eastern iconography, there is also some evidence that fringed decoration on clothes signified kingship and/or divinity for the Minoans, so it may not even have been appropriate for these men to wear fringed kilts.

I don't believe these stripes represent one or more woven bands sewn onto the kilt, either.  In my view this is more likely to be a panel of embroidered decoration* because the stripes, and the space in between them, are shaped like an elongated crescent.  If you unfolded the kilt it would look like this:

Weaving bands of cloth that taper to a point at each end is difficult if not impossible.  It makes more sense to interpret the decoration as an embroidered panel, or perhaps applique, and as you can see in the top image embroidery reproduces the stripes nicely.

*  It would be possible to weave this decoration directly into the fabric using tapestry techniques, but it would be difficult.  If the piece was being made on the standard Aegean warp-weighted loom, it would be extremely difficult.

The added value textile hypothesis

Otherwise known as the "weaving a large polychrome textile is not feasible for me, so let's think outside that box" hypothesis.

Most studies of patterned Minoan and Mycenaean textiles tend to focus on textiles with patterns woven into them, because weaving does seem to have been an important method of producing patterned textiles.  The weaving techniques used involved brocades made with supplementary threads, and probably also tapestry.  But weaving is only one of several ways to create patterned cloth, and in fact we know from the Linear B evidence that textiles frequently had decorative elements applied after they were woven.

The reason for this is that not all textiles were woven on-site at the palace administrative centers, and the weavers had a range of different skill levels.  Woven fabric came from a variety of sources, because in the Bronze Age taxes were paid in labour or in commodities like cloth.  Polychrome weaving demands a very high level of technical ability, especially for the kind of designs attested on Aegean frescoes, and quality could not be guaranteed when the weaving process happened outside the palace.  The solution was to get weavers to produce plain cloth and then decorate it using a separate finishing process at the palace, where quality could be assured.

Presumably cloth woven at Knossos and other palace sites was made by specialists and involved advanced techniques, such as brocaded patterns.

The process of adding value to plain cloth was carried out by specialised workers listed in the Linear B tablets. Men were employed as fullers, while a-ka-te-ri-ja and o-nu-ke-ja were women whose job was to decorate finished cloth.  o-nu-ke (onukhes probably) literally means fingernails or claws, but in a textile context it means wool-based decorative elements applied to cloth.  It may therefore be the Mycenaean term for embroidery, or perhaps fringed trim applied to garments.

Embroidery was used across Europe and the Near East in the Bronze Age.  Considering Greece's extensive trade links with the Near East, and the influence of Near Eastern traditions on Greek textile production known from the first millennium, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect Near Eastern-type embroidery in Greece.

Interestingly, one of the Akrotiri frescoes shows a piece of cloth decorated with dashed lines that may indicate running stitch.  However, these dashed lines may also represent carnelian beads.

Image from the Ancient History Encyclopedia

Textiles decorated with beads and other sewn-on ornaments appear to have been popular.  Large numbers of small gold foil shapes, like these ones from Mycenae, have been found in Mycenaean tombs.  They appear to have been sewn on to textiles, and would be a very effective way to add value to plain fabric.

Image from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

Another method of adding value to plain textiles, which is clearly shown in Minoan and Mycenaean art, is the use of decorative bands and fringes.  The women on the Aghia Triada sarcophagus (pictured below) wear dresses made of plain cloth, ornamented with with coloured bands which appear to have been sewn onto the finished garment.  These bands could be fairly ornate, like the one from Tyrins I copied a couple of years ago.  Making and applying such bands may have been the job of the workers known as o-nu-ke-ja (onukheiai).

Image of the Aghia Triada sarcophagus from Wikimedia.

Evans also suggested the possibility that Minoan and Mycenaean textiles may have been painted or block printed.  There are, in fact, examples of painted textiles from ancient Egypt, but these appear to have been associated with funerary contexts rather than clothing for living people.

It's not entirely clear whether this sort of added value process also characterised the Minoan textile production model.  Minoan textile production didn't operate in exactly the same way as the Mycenaean system reflected in the Linear B archives, but the scholarly consensus is that the Mycenaean system developed from the earlier Minoan model.  When the Mycenaeans took over Crete, they simply used and adapted the infrastructure that was already in place.  Therefore, the two systems had a number of similarities, particularly in the sense that cloth was delivered to the administrative centers but not necessarily made there.

The Minoan system appears to have been a little less centralised, meaning cloth was even less likely to have been made in a palace workshop staffed by experts.  However, the Minoans had extensive international trade networks, beginning around 2700 BCE.  It's reasonable to expect this trade included textiles which would have needed to meet a consistent quality standard, so the assumption that Minoan cloth sometimes started life plain and was finished at Knossos is consistent with our understanding of Minoan textile production.

I don’t wish to downplay the importance of patterned weaving in the Minoan and Mycenaean textile industries.  There’s plenty of evidence to show it was important.  What I’m saying is that when we consider the Linear B texts it becomes clear weaving was not the only method used to create patterned textiles, and therefore it is not the only method we should consider when trying to reconstruct Bronze Age textiles.


References

Abdel-Kareem, O. et al.  2008.  "Conservation of a Rare Painted Ancient Egyptian Textile Object from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo".  e-PreservationScience 5, 9-16.

Alberti, M. E.  2007.  "The Minoan Textile Industry and the Territory from Neopalatial to Mycenaean Times: Some First Thoughts".  Creta Antica 8.  243.

Barber, E.  1991.  Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean.  Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.

Casson, L.  1991.  The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times (2nd edition).  Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.

Evans, A.  1921.  The Palace of Minos.  London: MacMillan & co.  You can download it here.

Gleba, M.  2017.  "Tracing textile cultures of Italy and Greece in the early first millennium BC".  Antiquity, Volume 91, Issue 359, pp. 1205-1222  Available here.

Immerwahr, S. A. 1990. Aegean Painting in the Bronze Age. University Park (PA): The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Laffineur, R. & Betancourt, P. P. (eds) 1997.  TEXNH: Craftsmen, Craftswomen, and Craftsmanship in the Aegean Bronze Age.  Philadelphia: Temple University.

Nosch, M. L. 2014 "The Aegean Wool Economies of the Bronze Age". Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings. 900.  http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/900

Nosch, M. L. (ed)  2014.  Prehistoric,  Ancient Near Eastern, and Aegean Textiles and Dress.  Oxford: Oxbow Books Limited.

 Nosch, M.L. & Laffineur, R. (eds)  2012.  KOSMOS: Jewellery, Adornment, and Textiles in the Aegean Bronze Age.  Leuven: Peeters Publishers.

Nosch, M. L. & Gillis, C. (eds)  2007.  Ancient Textiles: Production, Crafts and Society.  Oxford: Oxbow Books Limited.

Ortiz-Garcia, J.  2017.  "Painting on Linen Cloth in Antiquity: Shrouds from Roman Egypt as a Source for Research".  Textile: Cloth and Cultutre, Volume 15, Issue 1, pp. 34-47.

Ventriss, M. & Chadwick, J.  1959.  Documents in Mycenaean Greek.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Or download it here.

The Phaistos helmet reconstruction - complete

There you have it folks, my reconstruction of a 16th century BCE Minoan helmet.

Here it is with the original Phaistos helmet for comparison

My objective was to make a helmet that is as close as possible to what the Minoans actually used, based on what we know about helmets in the bronze age.  How historically accurate is my reconstruction?  Overall this was quite a successful project and the final product does successfully recreate the Phaistos helmet.  Where I've had to make assumptions, I'm fairly confident that they are plausible and reasonable.    As far as possible I've used materials and technique that were available to the Minoans, with the exception of three little cheats: metal components made out of modern ferrous alloy, modern dyes for the felt, and modern steel tools.  In this blog post I'll talk about some of the decisions I made and why I made them.

Because these helmets were made from perishable materials there are no surviving examples.  There are depictions of beehive helmets in Minoan and Mycenaean art, but these are small, often fairly stylized, and can be interpreted in a number of different ways.

Some of the most detailed depictions of beehive helmets in ancient art show boars' tusk helmets of the kind Homer described.  These sculptures show helmets that were constructed around a framework of leather strips, and I've constructed mine the same way.  The difference is that instead of boars' tusks my helmet has an outer shell of leather plates.

From the front

From the side

From the inside.  The felt lining is what Homer called a πίλός (pilos).

Because of the lack of direct archaeological evidence I've had to make some assumptions, and to some extent this project has been about testing those assumptions.  Using felt to cover the joins in the outer layer of the helmet was an assumption based on the fact that it's well suited to the task, and we know that felt was used to line helmets.   While it would have been possible to use leather I think the felt did a better job and was easier to work with, so that assumption worked fairly well.  The felt lining inside the helmet makes it more comfortable to wear, but on the outside it's mainly decorative.  It's there to cover the join lines between the leather plates.

My decision to make the outer shell of the helmet in four parts was also an assumption.   I don't know if the Minoans would have had a way to make the outside of a helmet in one piece, but that wasn't possible with the leather I used.

The fact that Aegean beehive helmets were usually made from perishable materials is fairly conclusively established*, but exactly what materials were used and how they were used is less clear.  Based on archaeological finds of metal reinforcement discs we know that this style of helmet was made from either leather or some type of textile with metal discs attached to it to enhance its protective qualities.   Leather is a reasonable guess, but it's also possible these helmets could have been made from linen.  Probably many layers of linen glued together much like a linothorax.   Some bronze age images show helmets with horizontal ridges that I think may perhaps represent thick rolls of glued linen.  In the future I'd like to try making a linen helmet to see how it works out.

From the top you can see the concentric leather rings that make up the outside of the helmet.

What kind of protection would this helmet offer?  

I have to admit that after spending between 20 and 30 hours making this thing I don’t particularly want to take it down the firing range and shoot at it.  However, it would be easy enough to make a test patch and I can already make some observations about the helmet’s protective qualities.

At its thinnest point, the helmet is 20mm thick.  This includes two layers of 5mm armour leather plus two layers of wool felt.  At its crown the helmet is a good two inches thick, with many layers of leather strips.  It weighs 1.4 kilograms, which is equivalent to a lightweight motorcycle helmet.

I’m inclined to think the primary purpose of a helmet like this was to prevent blunt force trauma.  It’s made from thick layers of flexible materials that can absorb the kinetic energy of an impact, and it offers as much protection as possible to the crown of the head.  The thick leather reinforced with metal studs would be relatively difficult to penetrate with a sword or arrow, but the construction as a whole seems designed to absorb the kinetic energy of an impact rather than to provide the kind of solid barrier that plate armour does. In this respect it's a lot like a linothorax.

Would I be happy to let someone hit me over the head while wearing this helmet?  Yes.  Yes I would.



*  Helmets made entirely out of metal did exist in the bronze age, but were unusual.  Even the famous Dendra Panoply did not come with a metal helmet.  Its owner apparently preferred a boars' tusk helmet.

Inside the Phaistos helmet

The Phaistos helmet has a double border running around the edges of the neck and cheek guards.  It's hard to tell for sure what this feature represents, but I believe it's a piece of felt sewn onto the inside of the helmet as padding and then folded over to the outside to create a decorative edge.

Double border around the neck and cheek guards.  The border extends to the edge of each piece and appears to be slightly raised.

This is not the only way to interpret the double border, but it is consistent with the fact that beehive helmets were lined in felt.  Homer uses the word πιλος (pilos) to describe a cap made out of felt which formed the lining of a helmet.  Later on, the word came to mean a helmet in Classical Greek.  Thucydides calls the Spartans' helmets πιλοι (piloi), but in reality they were probably made of bronze.  They were beehive shaped though.

Decorative border around the neck and cheek guards of my helmet.

In my very first post on the beehive helmet, I discussed the parallels between bronze age Aegean helmets and today's motorcycle helmets.  The pilos is equivalent to the foam padding inside a motorcycle helmet that makes it comfortable to wear.  My Phaistos helmet is a hell of a lot more comfortable with a pilos inside, and because this is very thick felt it does provide a little extra protection.

The inside of my helmet, fully lined.

These next photos show how I made the double border around the cheek and neck guards.  There's a piece of felt on the inside of each guard, and it is folded over the edge of the leather.  Then I've stitched right through both the leather and the felt to keep everything in place.  A second strip of felt is stitched in place to create a border with two blue ridges.

Felt is ideal for this process because it can be stretched and folded around corners, and unlike woven textiles it will not fray.

In this photo I'm starting to sew felt to the inside of the cheek guard.

In this photo I've finished sewing felt to the inside of the cheek guard and I'm finishing the decorative edging.

The stitching is done with heavy linen thread and goes right through both the leather and the felt lining.

More beehive helmet

Yep, I've been doing a bit more work on the beehive helmet.  I now have the outer shell of the helmet fully assembled.  I've connected my outer helmet pieces together using strips of felt sewn to the edges of the leather bands.  The felt strips connect the leather bands together, and cover up the joins.

This is to some extent a matter of interpretation, but it's an educated guess based on what we know about beehive helmet construction.  If I was making a boars' tusk helmet I would place strips of felt behind each row of tusks, and fold the felt edges over the ends of the tusks to create a nice neat edge.  It's also possible to use thin leather for this step, but personally I prefer felt because it can be stretched and eased to fit the helmet's curves.  It's more difficult to do that with leather.

Another reason I think this stuff was felt, not leather, is that in Minoan paintings it is brightly coloured.  I'm not sure if it was possible to dye leather bright colours using bronze age techniques, but they could certainly dye wool.

Take a look at these warriors from one of the Akrotiri frescoes.  Although the figures are very small and not especially detailed, we can see blue stripes between the rows of boars' tusks on their helmets.  We can also see that the cowhide used to make their shields is not dyed, which makes me wonder if they perhaps didn't have effective processes for dying leather.  If anyone knows, please comment and enlighten me.

Picture from The Stream of Time.

I made the felt myself, because commercially produced felt doesn't have the right properties for a Minoan helmet. This is stiff, solid fabric about a quarter inch thick and quite different from what you can buy at a craft store.  I used to think the felt was largely decorative, but now I'm starting to think it may have provided some level of protection in its own right.  It turns out Thucydides and Pliny both mention felt as being arrow-resistant.

What are o-pa-wo-ta?

That picture again.

The Phaistos helmet has circular markings with little holes in the middle at regular intervals around the outside.  These are reinforcement discs, or o-pa-wo-ta in Linear B (έπαϝορτα) .  It means "attachments", and we know from Linear B archives that o-pa-wo-ta were used on both helmets and body armour to enhance the protective qualities of perishable materials such as leather and linen.  O-pa-wo-ta were made of bronze (possibly ivory or bone in some cases), and they gave extra protection against arrows and sword blows.  Very few bronze age helmets were made entirely of metal, but metal reinforcement pieces were a common design element right through the bronze age.  The Phaistos relief would have had metal discs that unfortunately haven't survived, and they would have been shaped like little nails with pins driven into the holes in the ivory piece.

Reinforcement pieces on real helmets were either metal studs with pins that were hammered through the leather, or perforated discs stitched to the leather.  Archaeological evidence suggest both types were used, but for this project I'm going with metal studs similar to these late bronze age examples found at Lakkithra, which have a round, slightly domed head with a pin in the center.

Small bronze nails used to reinforce a helmet, found at Lakkithra.

Bronze age art indicates o-pa-wo-ta came in all sizes, from relatively large ones on the Phaistos relief to tiny ones that look more like studs on a leather jacket on the Warrior Vase from Mycenae, made around 1200 BCE.  The white dots on these helmets represent o-pa-wo-ta.  Bearing in mind the fact that o-pa-wo-ta could also be used on body armour, the white dots on the warriors' kilts may also represent o-pa-wo-ta.

Picture found here.

These small o-pa-wo-ta scattered randomly over the surface of the helmet are a bit unusual.  Most depictions of bronze age helmets show the o-pa-wo-ta arranged in horizontal rows.

I should point out here that the circular markings on the Phaistos relief don't necessarily indicate what shape the metal discs were.  It's quite possible they were round with a small circle in the middle, but they may not have been.  Other art works suggest plain round discs like the ones from Lakkithra and some clearly show o-pa-wo-ta shaped like rosettes, which is why I was quite excited when I found some studs in the shape of little rosettes.

Those are furniture tacks.  They were described as "bronze" on the Ebay listing, but of course that refers to the colour.  I doubt they are actually bronze, but they do look about right.  As you can see they're a lot like the Lakkithra studs, apart from the embossed rosettes.  They have the same slightly domed head and central pin.  Even though they aren't quite the right metal, I'm very pleased with them.

Studs in the shape of rosettes are shown on some pictures of helmets from this time, and rosettes in general were a common design in Minoan and Mycenaean art.  Many were very similar to the rosettes on my furniture tacks.

A Minoan helmet with rosette-shaped studs and what appear to be rows of boar tusks.

References for the Linear B tablets:

Chadwick, J., Killen, J. T., Olivier, J.P. 1971.  The Knossos Tablets (4th Edition).  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ventris, M., Chadwick, J.  1956.  Documents in Mycenaean Greek.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Minoan beehive helmet: the outer layer

This is the third part of my beehive helmet series, in which I describe how I'm reconstructing a Minoan helmet like this one from Phaistos.  In part two, I talked about how I made the inside of the helmet.  This post deals with the outer layer.

Picture from the Salimbeti website

The outside of the helmet is made from four horizontal bands of leather, joined together with what are probably strips of felt.  Since the helmet is shaped, these leather bands have to be shaped too.  I can't really provide a pattern like I did for the internal structure, because the external layer's shape and dimensions depend on the internal support and will therefore be slightly different for every helmet.

Bands 1 to 4, clockwise from left.

Band 1 is simply a strip of leather 50mm wide and long enough to go around the helmet plus about 50mm.

Band 2 is also a strip of leather 50mm wide, but it has been stretched until it has a slight curve.  It started out 30mm longer than the circumference of the helmet, and after stretching the bottom edge of band 2 is 20mm longer than the top edge.  It's not much,  but it's enough.

Band 3 has more of a curve than I could achieve just by stretching the leather.  I could do it with thinner leather, but this stuff is thick and tough.  Therefore, I made a pattern by taping a piece of paper around the top of the helmet and drawing the band.  Once I cut the paper, I had a pattern I could use to cut out my leather.

Piece of paper wrapped around the helmet, with the shape of band 3 drawn on.

Pattern for band 3.

Band 4 is a circle 120mm in diameter with a 50mm hole cut out of the centre.  It is shaped into a shallow cone.

To shape the leather, I gave it a really good soak in hot water until it was thoroughly saturated (this takes an hour or so), then moulded and stretched it until it fit over the inner helmet.  I kept that dry by wrapping it in clingfilm.  No it's not historically accurate, but it gets the job done.  The inner helmet is nowhere hear rigid enough to be used as a mould for shaping the outer bands, so I just used my hands to shape bands 1 through 3, and found a wine bottle worked well for shaping band 4.  Maybe the Minoans used wine jars too.

Soaking the leather makes it a lot softer, but with leather this thick it still takes a little patience and a lot of brute force to shape the pieces.  The same goes for piercing holes to stitch the leather bands together and attach metal studs, which I'll discuss in more depth in the next post.

There are no words to describe how sick I am of making awl holes in armour leather.

The easiest way to do it is to soak the leather and then heat the awl over a candle, which I suspect was how the Minoans did it, but "easiest" is a relative term in this context.  It must have been even more difficult in the Bronze Age, because steel tools were not yet available.  The tools they had didn't hold an edge the way steel tools do.

Minoan/Mycenaean helmet pattern

My proposed reconstruction of the Phaistos helmet has two layers of leather: an inner layer that creates the distinctive conical shape, and an outer layer of horizontal bands that will be sewn together.  I'm putting the pattern on the net here in case anyone wants to use it.

This pattern is for the internal layer of the helmet; I'll talk about the outer layer in a future post, but today we're going to concentrate on the helmet's internal construction.  While the exterior design of bronze age Aegean helmets varied considerably, the internal construction seems not to have changed very much.  My helmet is based on a  Minoan relief from the 16th century BCE, but this pattern would work equally well for many of the late Mycenaean designs or for the classic boar's tusk model.  Enjoy!

The neck and cheek guards are of course optional; many bronze age helmets didn't have them.

This pattern makes a helmet whose circumference is 600 mm (24").  It needs to be slightly too big for your head because it will have a felt cap (πιλος) inside it.  If you use this pattern you'll have to check that the dimensions work for your head, but to some extent it's a one-size-fits-most deal.  If it's a bit loose all you have to do is add another layer of felt inside it. Linear B inventories of armour from Knossos and Pylos include helmets, which makes me wonder if they were sometimes mass produced.

The pattern piece is sewn together at the center front with linen thread and the top has been cut into strips, which are tied together in a bundle to give it the conical beehive shape.  This process is more difficult than you might think.  Expect to spend a lot of time fiddling with the top knot to make it work.

If you use very thick leather you'll find, as I did, that it's impossible to tie all the strips together at the top.  I tied only some of my strips into the top knot, and left the others free on the inside of the helmet.  I don't think this affects the protective qualities of the helmet, especially since this is only the internal layer, but it's interesting because when Homer describes Odysseus' helmet he says the leather strips at the top are "interwoven".  I wonder if this is what he meant?

My helmet is made of 5 mm thick veg-tanned armour leather.  Here in NZ it can be bought from Lapco and as far as leather goes it is not too expensive.  Ideally you do want this kind of leather, but if you can't get it or can't afford it you may be able to use an old leather jacket. Part of the reason you need thick, stiff leather is that the top part of the helmet has to keep its shape on its own without any other support.  It is literally strips of leather tied together.

You may be wondering why the seam is at the front instead of the back, which is the more intuitively obvious place.  That's because this helmet has a neck guard at the back.  Putting the seam up the center back would screw up the neck guard, and the seam will be covered by another layer of leather, plus metal reinforcing discs, so it should be safe enough.

Some thoughts on the beehive helmet

I want to make a beehive helmet, like the one shown in this ivory relief from Phaistos.  It's basically the same thing as the famous boars' tusk helmet featured in the Iliad,  but with what appear to be metal studs instead of tusks.  Metal studs may have been a cheaper alternative and were a popular choice right up until the end of the Bronze Age.

Picture from the Salimbeti website

Various forms of beehive helmet are depicted in Greek art from the Neolithic through to the end of the Bronze Age, but they all have that distinctive conical shape and in most cases seem to have been made from leather or linen, although metal versions did exist (and in some cases they continued to be used in the Classical period).

I'm reluctant to compare the beehive helmet to a modern military helmet, because it was designed for a different purpose.  The beehive helmet didn't have to stop bullets, because in 1600 BCE bullets didn't exist yet.  It had to protect the wearer from arrows and sword blows, as well as maces and stones fired from slingshots.  Slingshots were not uncommon on ancient battlefields in Europe and the Near East because they were cheap, and they could be very effective too.

This meant the beehive helmet had to be resistant to cutting or piercing, and it also had to protect the wearer from blunt force trauma.  It would have been very important to use designs and materials that could absorb and dissipate the kinetic energy from an impact.  In this respect I think the beehive helmet would have worked rather like a motorcycle helmet.

Let's take a look at a motorcycle helmet:

Image found here.

The helmet has a hard outer shell which may be made from thermoplastic, kevlar, or carbon fiber.  Inside the shell, there is a thick layer of styrofoam, which dissipates the energy of an impact.  This is the part that prevents head injury.  Next comes a layer of soft foam to help the helmet sit comfortably on the rider's head.  These days some military helmets also have foam inside them to absorb impacts.

Homer gives us a little bit of information on how boars’ tusk helmets were made, and I think this information can be used as a starting point for reconstructing the Phaistos helmet.  In book 10 of the Iliad Homer describes the boar’s tusk helmet which Meriones gave to Odysseus:

"On the inside there was a strong lining on interwoven straps, onto which a felt cap had been sewn in. The outside was cleverly adorned all around with rows of white tusks from a shiny-toothed boar, the tusks running in alternate directions in each row."

This is a cross section of the helmet Homer described:

Picture from http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/helmets2.htm

In terms of function, this is quite similar to the motorcycle helmet.  The boars' tusks correspond to the hard outer shell of the motorcycle helmet, while the leather core would absorb impacts.  The felt lining made it more comfortable to wear.  Boars' tusk helmets, by the way, weren't exclusive to Greece.  They've been found as far afield as Serbia.

The ivory helmet from Phaistos dates to the 16th century BCE and is therefore roughly contemporaneous with many depictions of boars' tusk helmets, so it seems feasible that it would be constructed in more or less the same way.  I'm going to explore that hypothesis, and try to reconstruct the Phaistos helmet using leather.

The "sacral knot"

The "sacral knot" is a loop of cloth with two fringed ends hanging down, and it occurs quite often in Minoan and Mycenaean art.  In some paintings, like this one from Knossos, people wear these knots attached to the back of their clothes.

Image found here.

It was Arthur Evans who coined the term "sacral knot".  I don't like the term and I think Evans tended to let his romantic sensibilities run away with him.  The knot certainly had cultural and possibly ritual significance, but we don't know exactly what it signified.  It may have been a kind of protective amulet, similar to the Egyptian tyet hieroglyph.

Anyway, the knotted scarf has a very long history in the Aegean.  When the knot occurs in paintings, it's coloured blue and red*.  It usually has a reticulated pattern with blue and red fringes, which confirms that there are two warp colours involved.

Faience "sacral knots" from Grave Circle A at Mycenae.  Picture found here.

Working out how to finish the ends was a bit of a problem for me.  The warp threads are allowed to hang loose on these knots, and don't appear to have been knotted together to prevent unraveling.  So how should I stop the ends unraveling?  And what about the coloured stripes at each end?  Those could be supplementary weft threads, but that doesn't explain how to finish the ends.  So I've taken a bit of an educated guess and twined red yarn around the warp threads.**  I should stress this is totally conjectural.  It stops the fabric unraveling and replicates the coloured stripe at the ends of the Mycenaean knot, but beyond that there's no support for this method.  This is another one for the "you can't prove it's wrong" file.

The Challenge: Re-do.  I'm repeating Challenge 10: Art, but also Challenge 13: Under $10 and Challenge 2: Innovation, which is cool because I didn't manage to do Innovation the first time round and that really bummed me out.  Using supplementary yarns to create patterned textiles was a very early innovation, but one of the most important innovations in the history of Bronze Age Aegean textile manufacture.

Fabric: Relatively balanced tabby weave woolen cloth with a supplementary warp pattern.

Pattern: I drafted it myself based on Minoan and Mycenaean art.

Year: Anywhere from 1700 to 1050 BCE.

Notions: N/A.

How historically accurate is it?  Well, I know the colours are about right, but this wool will have been dyed with synthetic dyes and while wool is probably the right fiber, Bronze Age wool was structurally different to the merino wool available in my local shop.

I have tried to construct the fabric in as accurate a way as possible, based on what we know about Bronze Age Aegean textile production, but as I said my method of binding the ends is conjectural.  All up, I'd guess maybe 8/10 for accuracy.

Hours to complete: Somewhere around 5 hours.

First worn: Yesterday to Classics Department movie night.

Total cost: $9.90.


*Crowley, J. L. 2012 ‘Prestige Clothing in the Bronze Age Aegean’  in Kosmos pp 231-239.
**The stripes on the ends of the Mycenaean bands are clearly stripes of contrasting colour.   You could do that with a weft faced weave, but many depictions of sacral knots predate the use of weft faced weaving in the Aegean (see Smith, J. 2012 ‘Tapestries in the Mediterranean Late Bronze Age’ in Kosmos, pp 241-248).  Weft faced cloth only shows up at the end of the Bronze Age, probably for the simple reason that it's very, very hard to achieve on a warp weighted loom.  It might be doable using linen warp, wool weft and very heavy weights, but tapestry looms would be a better choice.  In later periods weft-faced cloth was made on tapestry looms.  

Supplementary warp band

For HSF Challenge 10 I made a woven band based on a fresco from Tyrins, and it damn near killed me.  So naturally I'm doing another one for Challenge 21: Re-do.  But this time it will be different, because I've chosen a simpler design and a different construction method.  Last time I used supplementary weft.  This time it's supplementary warp and in only two colours.

What made my last attempt at Bronze Age band weaving so particularly hellish was that I had to juggle five colours of supplementary yarn.  Here, however, I only have one.  I learned that lesson.

When I made the Tyrins band a couple of people on the Historical Sew Fortnightly Facebook group asked if I took photos of the construction process, but unfortunately I didn't have this blog at the time and hadn't taken any pictures.  Well folks, prepare to laugh yourselves silly as I show you the dodgiest warp weighted loom set up you will ever see.

This loom has everything.  Cardboard tubes I fished out of the recycling bag, parts of a rigid heddle loom (the rigid heddle may or may not be period), teacups used as weights, a chair back, and of course lots of string.

The skein of red wool hanging over the chair back is the supplementary warp, which will create the design on the finished cloth.  In this next photo, the supplementary warp is woven into the fabric.  Supplementary warp is the most likely method for making the decorative bands that adorned Minoan and Mycenaean clothes, although based on my experience with the Tyrins band I'm pretty sure that design couldn't be done just with supplementary warp.  Because it has thin horizontal lines it would need supplementary wefts as well.  I'm not game to find out.

The blue and red look nicer together than I thought they would.

This band is based on examples from Knossos and Mycenae.  It's easy to make, and the pattern is even reversible.  I think of it as a fishing net pattern, though I have no idea if that's what it was supposed to represent.

Warp weighted looms are a fairly complicated concept, but as I've demonstrated they're extremely simple to make.  The Greek term is a histon, and the looms used in the Bronze Age were probably just like the ones pictured on later Greek vases.  My loom obviously uses modern materials, but it works in just the same way as an ancient loom and it makes the same type of cloth.

The side-pleated skirt is finished

Here is my entry for HSF challenge 20: Alternative Universe.  This is an alternative to the pattern proposed by Bernice Jones in her 2012 article The Construction and Significance of the Minoan Side-Pleated Skirt, featured in the latest Aegaeum book.  To recap my thinking on this, I hypothesize that there were two methods of making side-pleated skirts: one way is a tube of fabric pleated and tied at the waist as Dr. Jones has described, and the other is the two piece pattern I've used, which is essentially an A-line skirt with what we would now call organ pleats up each side.

The reason I think there were two patterns in use is that there are two different skirt shapes depicted in Minoan art.  Some skirts are clearly tubular like the one Dr. Jones reconstructed, while others appear to be fitted at the waist.

So did my pattern work?

Overall, I think it was reasonably successful.  Here it is from the side, showing the side pleats:

My pleats are held together at the waist with two little ties.

And here it is from the front.  As you can see, it could use an underskirt to help it keep its shape:

It does, however, have the flat, A-line shape that we see in Minoan art.  Here's my inspiration picture again for comparison:

Late Minoan bronze figure, image from Pinterest.

I think my pattern does a pretty good job of replicating the sculpture's skirt, but of course I'm biased.

Like the original, my reconstruction sits slightly south of the dummy's natural waist (though you can't really tell with the loose heanos underneath), and I found this was really helpful in terms of getting the thing on and off.  The original has no visible closure, but it would be easy to conceal a slit in one of the pleats and the ties holding it shut would be hidden under the belt.

Speaking of the belt, I've photographed mine with a strip of wool tied around it to emulate the rolled belt Minoans wore with their side-pleated skirts:

What would I do differently in future?

If I was making this skirt again I would make the side pleats deeper - probably 10cm instead of 5cm.  As I mentioned before, the skirt also needs more structure.  This could be done by wearing it over an underskirt, but if it was made of heavier, stiffer fabric an underskirt might not be necessary.  I don't think it would need a boned undergarment like a farthingale or panniers.


The Challenge: Alternate Universe

Fabric: 2.5 meters of purple coat-weight wool.

Pattern: I drafted it myself based on various Minoan bronze and clay figurines.

Year: 1600 to 1450 BCE.

Notions: Linen thread.

How historically accurate is it?  As this is a speculative reconstruction, it's hard to say.  It's reasonable to assume the original was made from wool and of course it would have been hand-sewn, but otherwise there isn't a lot to go on.  My fabric is machine-woven, but I doubt it's all that different from Minoan fabrics.

There's no way of knowing whether the colour I chose is appropriate for one of these skirts.  I chose it because I like it, and because the Minoans liked purple too.  Purple cloth was apparently being produced on an industrial scale in Minoan times*, so purple cloth would have been available.  However, this garment had ceremonial significance and it's possible there were rules about what colour it should be.

Hours to complete: About 5 hours.

First worn: Directly after pleating it, to see how it drapes.

Total cost: $52.


* Apostolakou, V. et al,  2012, ‘The Minoan Settlement on Chryssi and its Murex Dye Industry’ in Kosmos pp 179-182
Barber, E. 1991, Prehistoric Textiles.
Brogan, T.M. et al, 2012, ‘The Purple Dye Industry of Eastern Crete’ in Kosmos pp 187-192

Making up the side-pleated skirt

As I said last time, my pattern for the Minoan side-pleated skirt is simply two trapezoidal pieces of fabric.  I stitched them together with linen thread using a lap over seam; I've discussed here why I think this kind of seam is appropriate for Minoan and/or Mycenaean items, and why I don't think it matters that the thread is a different colour.  The lap over seam is quite cool in that it joins the pieces together and binds the raw edges at the same time, but since this is fulled wool it doesn't fray.  The seams are hidden inside the pleats, so they aren't really visible once the garment is made up.

My lap over seam.  This picture is a reasonably good indication of the fabric colour.

After sewing both side seams I laid the skirt flat on the spare bed and folded the pleats. They're 5 cm deep, or 2 inches if you prefer imperial measurements.  I pinned right through each set of folded pleats, and turned the skirt inside out to fix the pleats in position.  I know, I know.  Pins are not period for the Bronze Age Aegean.  I suspect the period way to do this would be to baste the pleats together with one or two lines of basting stitches.  But I'm lazy, so pins it is.  The pleats are fixed in position with strips of cloth*.

Fixing the pleats in position.

Next time, I'll show you the finished skirt and we can see if this really is a viable way to construct a side-pleated skirt.

One of the best things about blogging is that you get feedback.  Leimomi made a really good comment on my last post.  She said "...I agree that the skirt looks like it flares from top to hem, but I immediately noticed the fabric wastage in a trapezoid, which is unusual for really early garments. Any theories on that?"

This is a great question, and it hadn't occurred to me to discuss this issue on the blog.  Thanks Leimomi!  Taking fabric consumption into consideration, here's the cutting layout I propose for this skirt:

This layout requires a piece of fabric 1 meter wide by 2.15 meters long, which is easily doable on a period loom.

The shaded triangles show the waste pieces of cloth.  There isn't a lot of wastage with this layout, and in general fabric wastage seems to have been less of a consideration for the Minoans than it was for other comparable cultures.   Compared to the kind of rectangular construction used in Classical Greece, Egypt, or Bronze Age Europe, Minoan and Mycenaean clothes are wasteful.  The pattern pieces are typically curved and this inevitably results in wasted fabric.  To demonstrate, here are cutting layouts I've used to make a heanos and a kilt:

Not to scale.

These patterns were developed by Bernice Jones** based on paintings and Mycenaean logograms which depict the items in question.  Dr Jones' heanos had a shoulder seam, but I made this one without because the fresco I was copying didn't show a shoulder seam.  Leimomi is right; this is very different from the kind of pattern layout you get with most early garments.  Because these clothes were worn by high status people, I actually wonder whether fabric wastage may have been a feature rather than a bug.

In Egypt and Classical Greece, everyone from kings to slaves wore clothes made in much the same way.  The difference was largely a matter of fabric quality and decoration.  What if Minoan and Mycenaean clothes were also constructed differently, depending on the wearer's status?  If that were the case, it's possible the average person's clothes were a lot more like Classical Greek clothes than the garments shown on palace frescoes.  If anyone has any thoughts on how to test that hypothesis, I'm all ears.


* There's a good description of how to make organ pleats in Sarah Thursfield's book The Medieval Tailor's Assistant.

** Jones, B. 2003, 'Veils and Mantles: An Investigation of the Construction and Function of the Costumes of the Veiled Dancer from Thera and the Camp Stool Banqueter from Knossos' in Metron.
Jones, B. 2009, 'New Reconstructions of the "Mykenaia" and a Seated Woman from Mycenae' American Journal of Archaeology Volume 113, Number 3.