Cypriot Fabrics? White Slip Pottery and Élite Linen Clothes of the Late Bronze Age

In this article we will point to the similarity between the decoration on Cypriot White Slip (WS) I and II pottery and contemporary 15th-14th-century BCE "Syrian"elite garments shown in 18th Dynasty Egyptian tombs. Depiction of men and women in the tombs of Rekhmire (TT100), Sobekhotep (TT63), Menkheperraseneb (TT86), and Anen (TT120) show white clothes decorated with both vertical and horizontal elements, with dotted and wavy additions. Such elements find direct parallels in the WS I decorative "vocabulary."We will examine the possibility that the Cypriot WS pottery imitates elite linen clothing produced during the international Late Bronze Age, some even on Cyprus, as indicated by the mention of "linen of Alashiya"(gaduru Alašiya) in Hittite inventory texts.