Amorite Army colors - 3rd Millenium BC

[Happy Wanderer]

Gents,

Does anyone have any images or descriptions of Amorite clothing colors and/or patterns of the late third millennium ie around the time of the rise of the Amorites and the fall of the of the Third Dynasty of Ur in Sumeria?

I assume whites, browns and creams and other colors mixed in would be right but believe more elaborate and colourful patterns and combinations also exist, but I can't put my finger on imagery or exact sources.


On Cutting Edge Miniature's website David May has painted some nice looking Amorites following the off whites, creams and light browns with mixed colors that I was thinking of.

http://cuttingedgeminiatures.com/epages/eshop378036.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/eshop378036/Categories/Early_Middle_Bronze_Age/Amorite_Kingdoms/Amorite_Kingdoms_Gallery

Cheers

Rolf

[Patrick Waterson]

Rolf,

I know of no descriptions (perhaps someone else does?) but from the discovery of ochre-based dye at Catalhuyuk and a madder-dyed fragment of cotton at Mohenjo-daro, I would suggest that you cannot go wrong with red.

This page http://kws.atlantia.sca.org/dyeing.html gives a brief history of dyes and dyestuffs, and the following extracts may give useful clues:

Wool, a protein-based fiber, has been found in Europe dating back to 2000 BCE. It was a common medieval fabric in both dyed and natural colors, and was processed by both professional manufacturers and housewives. Silk, another protein-based fiber, was imported from China to Persia as early as 400-600 BCE. It became quite popular in the Late Middle Ages, and major silk manufacturing centers were set up in France, Spain and Italy. These silk production centers also became centers of dye technology, as most silk was dyed and required the highest quality dyes available. Cotton was considered a luxury fabric, as it was imported all the way from India and usually dyed or painted before it was shipped. Cotton was also valued because of the brightness and colorfastness of the dyes used to color it, and also for its use in making candle wicks. Samples of cotton fabrics have been found in India and Pakistan dating to 3000 BCE

and

A Greek artifact known as the Stockholm Papyrus details dyestuffs and techniques in almost a recipe fashion as it was practiced Egypt in the third and fourth centuries CE. The great detail in which the preparation of the fibers and the dyeing materials and the dyeing process itself are recorded has led scholars to believe that it had to have been practiced for thousands of years previously in order to raise the process to such a science and art. It discusses mordanting the fibers using alum, copper and iron oxides to darken or "sadden" the red, blue, green and purple dyes, as well as the occasional use of tin and zinc. It describes over ten different recipes for using alkanet (Anchusa tinctoria) root as a dye employing camel and sheep urine, lentils, vinegar, wild cucumber and barley malt among others as aids to producing color. It also gave recipes on obtaining purple hues by overdyeing the alkanet with woad (Isatis tinctoria), madder (Rubia tinctorum), kermes (made from the dried bodies of the female shield louse or scale insect (Kermes ilicis)) and the heliotrope plant (Heliotropium arborescens). Excavated coptic textiles dating from the fourth to the sixth century CE show use of weld (Reseda luteola) to produce yellow, madder and woad for dark purple, and blue from indigo (Indigofera tinctoria). Scientists have been able to date a red obtained from Egyptian madder root from the fourteenth century BCE.

Also

Both Discorides, the Greek physician and Pliny the Elder, the Roman naturalist, mention in their first century works the preparation and dyeing of wool with various shellfish to produce colors of red, blue, purple and violet after first being mordanted with soapwort (Saponaria officinalis), oxgall or alum. (Schetky, 4) Both authors also mention the use of Indigo from the Orient to obtain blues, and Herodotus describes its use in a 450 BCE text. Dioscorides also mentions other dye plants of the ancient world, including madder, saffron (Crocus sativus) and weld for yellow, and woad for blue.

What this indicates is that red is a reasonable certainty, blue, green and even purple highly likely and yellow quite possible.  Styles and patterns I could only guess at, so if anyone else has any suggestions they would be very welcome.

One colour that probably would not appear is black: apparently this was hard to apply and tended to fade quickly in bright sunlight.

Patrick

[Sharur]

As I noted in Slingshot 274 (pp. 21-22), and as Patrick's comments here rather reinforced, the amount of useful data on dye colours from the millennia BC is very limited, and much that we "know" has been extrapolated from a few isolated examples, run back and forth in time. However, red (including some browns and oranges), white (natural linen and wool cream colours as well) and black seem to have been a key triad of colours for humans as long as humans have bothered with colours. There's an interesting article by Jessica Hemming in the December 2012 issue of "Folklore" (Vol. 123, No. 3, pp. 310-329 - yes, THIS December's!), "Red, White, and Black in Symbolic Thought: The Tricolour Folk Motif, Colour Naming, and Trichromatic Vision" which touches on the ancientness of this triplet, although is more concerned with its use in textual sources.

Black as a clothing dye I've not looked deeply into, but don't forget there's always black hair or wool which wouldn't need dyeing, while black as a paint still survives on some ancient Mesopotamian artefacts now. The clay cones with coloured bases that decorated the surface of the large temple columns at Warka/Uruk from the fourth millennium BC for example were done in zig-zag patterns of, yes indeed, red, buff-white and black! They're still remarkably fresh, if rather worn, in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin (or they were when I last saw them back in the late '90s).

As for patterning, you've only to look at examples of pottery decoration from ancient Mesopotamia to see what sorts of things the artists of the third millennium enjoyed - both figurative and abstract designs were commonplace, in simple and complex forms. There's no reason to me why such things couldn't have been copied onto others too, including into woven textiles or painted onto them. Even the design of reed walls used for cattle byres has a patterning to it (albeit only in monochrome, as the images are preserved on cylinder seal designs), while the plano-convex bricks of the Early Dynastic period were laid with a deliberate herringbone pattern in places, though this gave no greater strength to the structures constructed (if anything, probably the reverse).

Again, yes, we have to extrapolate from the known, but as ancient wargamers, this is par for the course.

[Happy Wanderer]

Gents,

Thanks very much for those thoughtful replies. It seems to be quite the case of interpreting related information with no firm sources.

So be it. I shall use your information to help formulate a suitable color palette!

Cheers

Rolf

[Patrick Waterson]

And if in doubt follow Alastair's advice - he really knows the period.

Patrick