Jewish dress in the Hasmonean period

March 9, 2022 1:38 PM

Because of reasons, I'm interested in Jewish clothing during the Hasmonean dynasty. I have had very little luck searching online. What can you tell me about Hasmonean Jewish dress, or failing that, contemporary clothing in the Levant?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (4 answers total)

Best answer: The most promising source I found is A Cultural History of Jewish Dress. I'd see if you can get a copy, perhaps through interlibrary loan - it doesn't have a huge amount of information about the time period you're interested in, apparently due to lack of evidence, but does describe similarities and differences between Judean dress and standard Hellenistic dress.

There's also an older book called A History of Jewish Costume. This one can be borrowed online through Open Library. It's older and should probably be taken with a grain of salt, but it does have pictures.

(By the way, if you do any additional searching, keywords you may find useful are "Judea," "Hellenistic," and maybe "Seleucid.")
posted by toastedcheese at 4:44 PM on March 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This, perhaps as an overview. Toastedcheese has a more comprehensive answer
posted by blob at 4:47 PM on March 9, 2022

Best answer: The most promising source I found is A Cultural History of Jewish Dress.

There is an online borrowable version of this at the Internet Archive. A search there for 'Hasmonean' might net some other titles but i did a quick scan and didn't see anything obvious.
posted by jessamyn at 5:58 PM on March 9, 2022

Response by poster: Thank you all very much, these are some great leads.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:05 PM on March 10, 2022