page_title: Byzantine dress
section_title: Colour
hierarchical_section_title: Byzantine dress / Colour
caption_attribution_description: English: Piece(s) number: 11238 - 11239 At the Coptic Museum in Cairo Two tapestry roundels from a tunic. Materials: The piece woven with linen threads, ornamented with wool threads. Techniques: Tapestry “unextended weft". Patterns: Each roundel decorated with two Overlapping circles, the outer one is decorated with dots. A portrait with long hair centers the inner circle. 7th century العربية: قطعتين رقم&#160;: 11238 -11239 بالمتحف القبطي بالقاهرة دائرتان منسوجتان يرجح أنهما كانتا تزينان قميص الخامات: السدا من الكتان واللحمات من الصوف الطبيعي المصبوغ. التقنيات: نسيج القباطي " نسيج اللحمات غير الممتده". الزخارف: يتألف تصميم كل قطعة من دائرتين متداخلتين زخرفت الدائرة الخارجية بدوائر صغيرة متتابعة، ويتوسط الدائرة الداخلية في كل منهما صورة نصفية لشخص ذو شعر مجعد طويل. القرن 7 م
context_page_description: Byzantine dress changed considerably over the thousand years of the Empire, but was essentially conservative. The Byzantines liked colour and pattern, and made and exported very richly patterned cloth, especially Byzantine silk, woven and embroidered for the upper classes, and resist-dyed and printed for the lower. A different border or trimming round the edges was very common, and many single stripes down the body or around the upper arm are seen, often denoting class or rank. Taste for the middle and upper classes followed the latest fashions at the Imperial Court. As in the West during the Middle Ages, clothing was very expensive for the poor, who probably wore the same well-worn clothes nearly all the time; this meant in particular that any costume owned by most women needed to fit throughout the full term of a pregnancy.
context_section_description: As in Roman times, purple was reserved for the royal family; other colours in various contexts conveyed information as to class and clerical or government rank. Lower-class people wore simple tunics but still had the preference for bright colours found in all Byzantine fashions.
  The races in the Hippodrome used four teams: red, white, blue and green; and the supporters of these became political factions, taking sides on the great theological issues—which were also political questions—of Arianism, Nestorianism and Monophysitism, and therefore on the Imperial claimants who also took sides.  Huge riots took place, in the 4th to 6th centuries and mostly in Constantinople, with deaths running into the thousands, between these factions, who naturally dressed in their appropriate colours.  In medieval France, there were similar colours-wearing political factions, called chaperons.
caption: Two embroidered roundels from an Egyptian 7th century tunic
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