Chlamys: The cultural biography of a garment in Hellenistic Egypt

Project Information

CHLAMYS

Grant agreement ID: 657898

DOI

10.3030/657898

Project closed

EC signature date 23 March 2015

Start date 1 May 2015

End date 30 April 2017

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 212 194,80

EU contribution

€ 212 194,80

Coordinated by

KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CHLAMYS (Chlamys: The cultural biography of a garment in Hellenistic Egypt)

Reporting period: 2015-05-01 to 2017-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This 2 MSCA-IF focussed on reconstructing the cultural biography of a single garment, the chlamys and uncovering the role of textile and dress material culture in the social and economic activities of the population of Hellenistic Egypt. One of the major innovative aspects of this project was that the chlamys was investigated as a worn object and a cultural symbol, thus capturing multiple glimpses of everyday life in Hellenistic Egypt, while providing a reassessment of the ongoing discourse on dress, ethnicity and identity in cross-cultural contact.
The overall aim of this project was to close the existing gap in knowledge about ancient Greek dress.
The 1st aim was to investigate how the choice of dress related to identity in Hellenistic Egypt by looking for the presence of this garment term in the documentary sources of the period. To this end, the project collected sources testifying to the role of Greek garments in Alexandria as well as in different parts of the vast and diverse Egyptian territory.
The 2nd aim was to highlight the relation of the chlamys to Alexandrian cartography and topography, especially in regard to cartographic heritage traced back to Eratosthenes’ imagined world as a chlamys-shaped one. A major outcome of the project was research conducted on rare maps spanning modern times from 15th to 19th c. By investigating modern reconstructions of Eratosthenes’ maps the project highlighted the importance of looking into the modern reception of ancient Greek cartography.
The final aim was to examine the semantic aspects of Greek dress vocabulary. This inquiry led to the discovery of a major lacuna in knowledge about Greek dress terminology. A major outcome was the construction of a trilingual terminology (English, French, Modern Greek) of Ancient Greek dress based on ontology.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

WP 1 Publication

1.The role of prepositional locatives in the Greek garb vocabulary cluster.’ Forth. De Gruyter
2. Spectators-in performance.’ To appear in Hellenistica Groningana
3. Poems from the world of wool: Dress and identity in Theocritus’ Idylls. Présence de Théocrite, Caesarodunum L-LI bis, Clermont-Ferrand, 2017, ISBN : 978-2-900479-22-3
4. Wool and the City: wool versus linen production in the Egyptian chora and consumption in Hellenistic Alexandria’, In Textile, Trade, and Theories. From the Ancient Near East to the Mediterranean. Ugarit-Verlag Münster, 2016 ISBN: 978-3- 86835-224-5
5. Why did Hipparchia not weave? An approach to discourse on gender (in)equality in Greek antiquity. In Proceedings from the conference «Hierarchy and Equality - Representations of Sex/Gender in the Ancient World» Norwegian Institute at Athens
6. Papadopoulou, M. (forthcoming). Textile Archaeology. In Blackwell Companion of Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt. Blackwell
7. ‘True colours: Misconceptions about ancient Greek colour and contemporary attempts to set them right’, Krakow
8. Lexical Leisure. One thousand Years of Colour Terminology of Textiles in Ancient Greece. Studies in Honour of Carmen Alfaro. Barcelona.

WP Deliverables
Organization of One-day symposium, University of Copenhagen.
2 syllabi for courses University of Copenhagen.
BA course ‘The world of Alexander the Great. Culture and Society in Hellenistic Greece and Egypt’. http://kurser.ku.dk/course/hhib06602u/2016-2017
MA course ‘Alexander the Great and Alexandria. Political Strategies and Foundation Myths’ http://kurser.ku.dk/course/hhik06747u/2016-2017
Ontoterminology of Greek garments (60 concept, 116 terms in French, Greek and English), 2 visualization tools on open access.

WP 2 Training
-2-day workshop on experimental archaeology, CTR and ATOM GDRI. Copenhagen
-2-day doctoral course on Epistemology, France
-2-day training on Terminology and Ontology. University Savoy
- 4-day on Demotic Egyptian, Maison d’Archéologie & Ethnologie-René Ginouvès, Nanterre

WP 3 Dissemination
Invited presentations
-‘The Role of Prepositional Locatives in the Greek Garb Vocabulary Cluster’, International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC 13)
- ‘Spectators-in-perfomance in Theocritus᾿ Adoniazusae’, 12th Groningen Workshop on Hellenistic Poetry
- ‘All the World’s a Cloak: Weaving metaphors as conceptualizations of space in Ancient Alexandria’, Stockholm Metaphor Festival
- ‘The Chlamys: Cloak of Wool and Symbol of Macedonian Culture’, Τhe Association of Dress Historians, London
- ‘A cloak for all seasons: the chlamys of Alexander the Great and the foundation of antiquity's knowledge capital’ in ‘Antikmuseet’, Aarhus University
- ‘Poems from the world of wool: Dress and identity in Theocritus' Idylls’ Présence de Théocrite, ENS Lyon & Clermont-Ferrand
- ‘Wool and the City: wool versus linen production in the Egyptian chora and consumption in Hellenistic Alexandria’, Textile trade and distribution, Kassel
-‘Alexander the Great’s Chlamys and the Politics of Dress in Hellenistic Egypt’, The Politics of Dress and Identity in Eastern Mediterranean Societies Past and Present, International Symposium, Amsterdam
-‘Lost and Found. Memory and Cultural Heritage in Alexandria’, IASCC 2016 - Heritage in Transition, Syros.
- ‘Why did Hipparchia not weave? An approach to discourse on gender (in)equality in Greek antiquity’, International Conference on Hierarchy and Equality. Representation of Sex/Gender in the Ancient World. Norwegian Institute at Athens.
- ‘Le lexique des textiles dans les papyrus de Zénon. Une approche conceptuelle’. International Conference, IFAO-Cairo
- ‘True colours: Misconceptions about ancient Greek colour and contemporary attempts to set them right’. Colour, Culture, Science, Krakow
- ‘Multilingual terminology of ancient Greek dress: an ontological approach’, Toth 2017 France

Invited talks
- Digital Classicist 101: the classical scholar’s digital toolkit. Copenhagen.
- ‘Inter-, cross-, trans- or multi- disciplinary? New approaches for antiquity research in the digital age, Copenhagen
- ‘Researching Hellenistic Egypt at the Centre for Textile Research’, Copenhagen
- Texts and Garbs: Greek garments in Hellenistic Egyptian textile and textual culture. Library of Alexandria
- Texts and Garbs: Greek garments in Hellenistic Egyptian textile and textual culture. KU Leuven
- Alexandria and Alexandria. The Foundation of a myth. University of Crete
- Investigating the tangible past. Cultural and Material History and Historiography. University of Crete
- Participation in H2020 workshop, Crete
- La chlamyde d’Alexandre le Grand. Paris Diderot

Communication
-blog: https://chlamys.sites.ku.dk/
-video: http://new.condillac.org/
-video ‘Writing a competitive research proposal for European Funding’ & ‘Project Life-Cycles and Best Practices: Presentation of case studies’. H2020 Workshop, Crete University

WP 4 Outreach
-‘King Tut’s Headscarf’ in Cutting Edge, ISBN 978-87-998798-1-6
-‘Hum’s Forskere I Anekdoteform’ in the Humanist 2/2016, http://www.e-pages.dk/ku/1250/

WP 5 Collaborations
-Research stay Princeton University
-Research stay KU Leuven
-Member of Condillac Group – LISTIC, Savoy University

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project closed a gap in the knowledge about the multiple meanings of this garment, shed light in the interpretative power of investigating culture-laden objects, generated progress beyond the state of the art in Ancient Greek Dress History, produced novel and replicable results by implementing an ontology for a dictionary of Greek Dress. 8 peer-reviewed publications in acclaimed publications emerged.

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