Textile Workshops in the Nile Valley? Questioning the Concepts and Sources

Throughout her career, Eva Andersson Strand has built a cohesive picture of past landscapes of textile production, creating a model for different scales of manufacture from household basic output to fully developed workshops. By combining information from different sources, she reconstructs the different facets of an industry at the heart of past economies. In the Nile valley however, an extensive questioning on the nature of the textile economy has not yet been conducted.
Using Eva Andersson Strand’s approach as a starting point, we will examine diverse modes of manufacture, focusing on two contexts: 1) New Kingdom Egypt (c. 1550–1070 bce) and 2) Meroitic and Postmeroitic Sudan (c. 350 bce – 550 ce). We will question the existence or absence of different levels of textile production in the ancient Nile valley.