Tarkhan dress
Vestido Tarkhan
- Date
- c. 3300 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Tarkhan, Fayum, Egypt
- Credited to
- Flinders Petrie
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
The Tarkhan dress is the oldest surviving woven garment: a linen tunic found in 1913 by Flinders Petrie at the Egyptian necropolis of Tarkhan. Recent radiocarbon dating places it around 3300 BC, in Egypt's Predynastic or Early Dynastic period.
Radiocarbon datings disagree: a 1978 test estimated c. 2362 BC; a 2015 University of Oxford test places it between 3482 and 3102 BC, now considered more reliable.
What it led to
- Earliest known evidence of tailored, fitted woven clothing
- Reference point for dating the origin of linen weaving in Egypt
- Preserved at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London