Hierarchy, economy, piety: late antique funerary textiles from Egypt in context

Textiles were the most common burial good found in the Late Antique cemeteries from Egypt, and as such have typically been taken as an indicator of the economic status of the individuals they were buried with. This chapter approaches these textiles as products of multifaceted social processes within both ritual and economic contexts to examine the different identities they reflect. Looking at cemeteries across Egypt from the fourth to seventh centuries, the continuities and changes in textile use during this period of profound social transformation are considered alongside evidence of changing views on the obligation of burial provision, the role of the body in the afterlife, and modes of production in funerary textiles. It concludes that as Christianity reshaped the norms of Late Antique society, including those surrounding mortuary practice, the use of funerary textiles could, at least initially, obscure the lived social hierarchies of the individuals they were buried with.