The Bible covers a time span of several thousand years, but the type of clothing worn by most Jewish people during that time did not change much. Jewish styles seem to have been influenced by both the simplicity of the Egyptians and the flamboyance of the Mesopotamians. Jewish clothing was fringed, but not like Mesopotamian clothing, which had fringes, overlapping fabric, frills, borders and colored braiding - less was not more in ancient Mesopotamia.
Both women and men wore a loincloth, the equivalent of underpants. This was a long thin strip of cloth which was wound around the waist and then between the legs, with the end tucked in at the waist. Women probably wore some sort of binding around their breasts.
The main garment, worn by both women and men, was the
halug, a tunic. This was made of two rectangular pieces of cloth joined in a long seam along the top of the arms, with a hole left for the head to go through. It also had a seam running down both sides, with holes left for the arms.
The
halug could be gathered up in a bunch at the shoulders, either with a clip or a tip-loop, or it could be tucked up at the waist if heavy work was being done.
Halugs made of fine linen or wool could be draped to fall gracefully.
The
halug was worn with a belt, either leather or metal, the decoration depending on the wealth of the wearer.
A cloak could be worn over the
halug. The edges and fringes of the cloak were often decorated.
When women went into public places, they wrapped their long hair in a piece of cloth. This cloth held their hair in place and acted as a head covering in the hot climate. It could also be used as a face covering. Rebecca used it to hide her face when she first met Isaac (
Genesis 24:65).
Total veiling, as worn by some Islamic women today, was not practiced. Sarah’s beauty was obviously visible to those around her (
Genesis 12). Rebecca was not veiled when she was drawing water from the spring (
Genesis 24:16).
Ancient people loved to decorate themselves with jewelry, which, as today, was valued for its beauty and for the status it gave to its owner. Every woman had jewelry, which was part of her personal wealth.
We have a good idea of clothing in New Testament times because of a discovery made in Israel in 1960. Bedouin tribesmen found many artifacts in a cave near En-gedi on the Dead Sea, which were dated to the Bar Kokhba War in 132CE. The cave was in a rocky cliff-face.
It appears that during the Bar Kokhba War a group of 17 people, including six children, were trapped in the cave. They starved to death there, rather than surrender to the Roman soldiers who were camped immediately above the entrance to their cave. A range of textiles was found with their skeletons. There were women’s cloaks, a child’s linen shirt, and skeins and balls of unspun purple wool. Laboratory analysis showed that three basic dyes had been used to obtain 34 different colors of thread (the three dyes were saffron yellow, indigo blue and alazarin red).
Among the artifacts found in the cave were pieces of jewelry, a box for powder and a brass mirror in a wooden frame.
Source:
http://www.womeninthebible.net/BIBLE-3.5.htm
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