Textiles also played a symbolic role in ancient Greek belief. In Plato’s Republic (circa 428-348 BCE)  human life is depicted as controlled by three female Fates (Moirae). The first Fate, named Clotho, spins the thread of each individual’s life. The next, Lachesis, measures the length of the thread with her measuring rod, thus determining lifespan. The third Fate, Atropos, cuts the thread, and so ends life.

Plato’s own city, Athens, was named after and protected by the goddess Athena. One of this goddess’s most important skills was weaving. It is no wonder, then, that the culmination of the Panathenaia, a major ceremony honouring Athena, involved a textile. The Panathenaia, held every fourth year in Athens, involved a procession to the Acropolis, where a woollen peplos was draped around the cult statue of Athena in the Erechtheum. Preparations for this ceremony began months earlier when the high priestess, with the help of four specially selected girls, set up the loom to weave the peplos. The girls, between 7-11 years of age, were called the arrephoroi, and they would live a year on the Acropolis. Two other girls, called ergastinai, would weave the peplos for the goddess. The prestige and importance of this ceremony are reflected in the fact it is carved on the east frieze of the Parthenon itself.(Haland 2005).

Athens was not the only ancient Greek community with such a ritual: the goddess Hera, protector of the city of Elis (northwest Peloponnesos), was regularly presented with a new peplos, woven by sixteen carefully selected women. Rituals have also been recorded of presenting specially prepared peploi to Hera at Heraion and at Olympia; to Apollo at Amyklai; and again to Athena at Argos.

Images on vases and many ancient literary references point to wool working and weaving as the work of women and girls in ancient Greece. But male weavers were not unknown (some two hundred man's names appear in Linear B tablets about weaving at Knossos); two male weavers, Helicon and Acesas, are recorded as making a sail that was presented to the goddess Athena on the Acropolis (von Hofsten 2011:18). It is possible that the weaving of specialized textiles, such as sails, was done by craftsmen. Yet weaving as a whole was seen as the women’s domain. In the Iliad, Hector explicitly tells the royal Andromache to “go to the house and busy yourself with your own tasks, the loom and the distaff, and tell your handmaids to ply their work: and war will be the concern for men…” (Book VI 490-493, Loeb translation).

Andromache is indeed described earlier as “… weaving a tapestry in the innermost part of the lofty house, a purple tapestry of double fold [in double weave], and in it she was weaving flowers of varied hue.” (Book XXII 440-441. Brackets by Susan T. Edmunds). Helen herself is also “…weaving a great purple web of double fold (in double weave])on which she was embroidering (in which she was portraying])many battles of the horse-taming Trojans and the bronze-clad Achaeans...” (Book III 121-128, with Edmunds' corrections in brackets).

Passages such as these throw light on ancient gender roles and relations. The historian Herodotus (484-425 BCE) was shocked (and doubtless shocked his Greek readers) when he wrote that in Egypt men were the weavers—and that they wove from the bottom up, not from the top down (as on a warp-weighted loom): “Not only is the Egyptian climate peculiar to their country…but the Egyptians themselves in their manners and customs seem to have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind.”

“For instance, women attend market and are employed in trade, while men stay at home and do the weaving. In weaving the normal way is to work the threads of the weft upwards, but the Egyptians work them downwards.” (Herodotus, The Histories, Book 2, chapter 35).

In his book Economics (Books 7 and 8), the historian/soldier Xenophon (died c. 354 BCE) has his character Isomakhos explain the running of the ideal household to his young wife. The ideal wife is likened to a queen bee. She is to teach slave women how to weave by standing in front of the loom herself. Likewise she must teach the women how to spin.

The careful study of loom weights and other textile tools can offer many insights into ancient Greek textile production. Loom weights should be examined for impressions of cloth, perhaps made when the clay was wet. Such impressions may provide clues as the weave and fineness of the textile. Fibres may also be preserved on a loom weight, especially inside or around the perforations. The width of a loom (hence the maximum width of the textile produced) might be calculated from the width of a line (or lines) of loom weights. First and foremost, loom weights provide evidence of textile technology, as shown above. But loom weights can also help to shed light on ancient economies; on migration; on gender construction and relations, and even on religious beliefs and practices.

The places where loom weights are discovered, and how the weights are grouped, can also give rise to important questions. Is the site a domestic dwelling, where textiles were produced for a household? Or is it a place where many weavers worked together? Researchers of the palace economies of the Aegean Bronze Age (Nosch 2014), where large-scale textile production was strictly organized by ruling elites, use loom weights and other archaeological finds (including Linear B inscriptions) to support their arguments.

Ancient Greek bobbin. TRC 2014.0797.Who made these loom weights? The weaver her/himself? A specialized craftsperson? One loom weight (TRC 2014.0795) and a bobbin (TRC 2014.0797) in the TRC collection bear stamps made in the clay before it was baked. While a stamp could conceivably be the personalized mark of an individual owner or administration, it is also possible that stamps indicate an object made by a recognized artisan for sale. This hints at the economic role textiles played.

Some researchers think that changes in the shape and/or decoration of loom weights point to migration, especially of women. The origins of, and changes in words for textile tools have also been used to argue for the movements of large groups of people. Other scholars point to changes as the result of invasion or trade.

Fragments of ancient Greek textiles have been discovered. The studies that have been made of these fragments are sometimes inconclusive or contradictory. The fragments from the Kerameikos cemetery in Athens, for example, were originally found to contain extremely rare (for Greece) silk fibres; a more recent analysis found no silk, but bast and possibly cotton fibres (Margariti and Kinti, 2014: Chapter 7).

Each textile discovery adds to our knowledge about the materials and techniques used. The discovery of the Koropi fragments showed that the ancient Greeks did employ embroidery techniques, something many scholars had doubted.. Wool and linen are the most common materials found; but there are others. At Kastelli Khania, on Crete, a small carbonized ribbon was found made of linen, goat hair and (perhaps) nettle fibres. The site was dated to the Late Bronze Age (Moulherat, C. and Spantidakii 2009: 8-15).

In 1875, textiles were found in burial mounds, called the Seven Brothers, near Kertch in the Crimea. These mounds are associated with the Greek Black Sea colony of Panticapaeum (also known as Pantikapaion). In Kurgan 6 some fifty fragments of a large woollen textile were discovered, draped over a wooden sarcophagus. This textile was made from at least eleven long bands stitched together. It was painted or resist-dyed in red, black and fawn colours, with scenes of running women, warriors, and at least two chariots drawn by horses. Some of the human figures are identified on the textile in Greek letters. The names Athena, Nike, Iocasta, Phaidra and Mopsos can be made out. It has been speculated that this textile may have been a wall hanging, perhaps in imitation of a more expensive woven tapestry, before it was used as a pall (von Hofsten, 2011:16). The textile had been carefully mended at some point.

Inside the sarcophagus, over the legs of a body, more textile fragments were found. These fragments belonged to a woollen tapestry with a design of polychrome ducks on a red background. Stags’ heads decorate the border. Based on other artefacts in the tomb, all the textiles were dated to the early 4th century BCE.

Other textiles have been found in the area. Fragments from the near-by Pavlovskij kurgan reveal a purple-reddish woollen textile. This textile was heavily embroidered in yellow-white, black and green colours, with palmettes and other plant motifs, a mounted rider and spiral waves. This textile has been dated to the mid-4th century BCE.

Early 5th century BC textile fragments, from Koropi, near Athens, Greece. Courtesy Victoria & Albert Museum, London, acc. nT.220 to B-1953o. On the Greek mainland, a small fragment of embroidered linen was found inside a bronze water jar at Koropi, near Athens, in Attica. The design was a diaper pattern with small lions in the centre of each lozenge. The threads were all Z-spun and the gold and silver embroidery threads had been wrapped around a fibre core (perhaps silk or linen). These fragments are now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (acc. T.220 to B-1953). The fragments were dyed green, with a tapestry or plain weave. They have been dated to 500-440 BCE. The fragments helped establish the fact that the ancient Greeks did have knowledge of embroidery techniques, something which had previously been doubted by scholars.

Other textiles come from a 1936 excavation of a grave (number 35 HTR 73) at the Kerameikos cemetery in Athens. A copper vessel was discovered wrapped in straw and wide purple ribbons, inside a sarcophagus. Inside the vessel were fragments of a textile decorated with stripes of purple on its corners. Some fragments were a plain weave, others weft-faced. Some fragments had selvedges and a starting edge, which indicates it was woven on an upright loom, perhaps the warp-weighted loom. The threads are single-ply with a Z-twist. As mentioned above, earlier analysis indicated the material was silk, but the latest analysis shows bast and possibly cotton fibres. The fragments are dated to between 430-400 BCE.

The most famous recent find is perhaps the 4th century BCE funerary pyre textile from the Royal Tomb II in Vergina. This tomb is associated with King Philip II of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great. Fragments of a tapestry woven, possibly woollen, textile were discovered in the tomb’s antechamber. In the centre of the textile is a floral design with two birds; the border has a meander motif. The textile was woven with gold and mollusk purple thread. The gold appeared to be “cut strips with no indication that they were spun around a core.” (Andrianou 2012: 46).