Where was this tunic ornament made?
This textile fragment likely was produced in Egypt, although we do not know the exact location where it was made. For many years, scholars assumed that linen-and-wool items like this were examples of "local" or "domestic" textile production, deriving from Upper (southern) Egyptian cities such as Panopolis (modern-day Akhmim), while those made from silk originated in northern cities such as Alexandria, which were centers of the Hellenistic and Mediterranean trade networks linking the Roman Mediterranean to Sassanid Persia, Central Asia, India, and China. As art historian Thelma Thomas has observed, this "tendency to separate out silks from other materials and the silk industry from production of and trade in wool, linen, and cotton persisted for nearly a century." More recent research, however, indicates that weaving, garment production, and other textile work in varying levels of sophistication, with varying forms of decoration and in varied materials, took place throughout Egypt. These textiles, moreover—whether in cotton, linen and wool, or silk—circulated around the late Roman world and beyond.
