The Ambiguity of Dress in Phoenician Art: A Case Study from Sidonian Coin Imagery Andrea Squitieri, In the Shadow of Empires: The Circulation of Calcite Vessels between Egypt and the Levant during the 1st Millennium BCE

Abstract

In recent decades, the study of ancient dress has thrived, resulting in a proliferation of academic conferences and edited volumes that critically examine dress and dress practices in the cultural contexts within which they were produced, consumed, and enacted. However, Phoenician dress is poorly represented in this boom of scholarship. Given the key role that dress plays in the construction and communication of identity and group belonging within and between societies, the study of dress requires more attention within Phoenician studies than it has received so far. The purpose of this article is to serve as a prolegomenon to the study of dress in Phoenician antiquity, with a focus on the challenges of interpreting the iconographic record, our primary source for the study of dress in Phoenician society. I begin with a brief background of the theoretical frameworks and methodological issues for the study of dress, especially in iconographic sources, followed by a case study of an example of how dress was deployed artistically in Phoenician visual culture: the chariot scene on the reverse of Sidonian double shekels in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Through this case study, I hope to correct some erroneous assumptions about depiction of dress in these images and highlight the ambiguity of dress and identity in Phoenician art.