Beaded Net Dress: A 4,500-year-old ancient Egyptian funerary “gown” popular during the Old Kingdom.

Archaeologists discovered this bead ensemble in Giza in 1927 in the Old Kingdom tomb of a female contemporary of King Khufu. The twine that held the 7,000 beads together fell apart, but experts were able to reconstruct the intricate garment based on where the beads were found and how this type of dress was depicted in ancient Egyptian art.

According to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which has a collection of this dress and several other examples of beaded netting, the netting was made from flax cord and faience (glazed ceramic made from finely ground quartz). In this case, mixing copper with the faience paste before firing gave the beads a blue or blue-green color, imitating the semi-precious stones lapis lazuli and turquoise.

The midi-length beaded net features a diamond-patterned skirt and an empire-waisted bodice made of vertical rows of faience beads. The top of the dress has a concentric beaded neckline and the bottom has a mitershell (sea snail) beaded fringe. The finished beadwork net was probably draped over a linen dress or sewn directly onto the dress, rather than being worn alone.

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Tom Hardwick, an Egyptologist at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, said Egyptian faience beads are extremely fragile, so the dress may have been worn only on special occasions or made specifically for the woman’s funeral. The blue and green of the dress may have symbolized the Nile and spring, both of which were tied to the Egyptian idea of ​​resurrection in the afterlife, Hardwick said.

According to MFA Boston, this beaded net dress is the oldest surviving example of this style. Only about 20 beaded net dresses exist in museums around the world. Two were restored at MFA Boston and one at the Petrie Museum at University College London. When Janet Johnston, a clothing consultant who specializes in interpreting and constructing ancient Egyptian clothing, restored the Petrie Museum’s beaded net dress, she discovered it was too heavy for everyday wear. (For those who want to test their bead net sewing skills, Johnston offers a basic DIY guide.)

During the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BC), beaded net dresses seem to have fallen out of fashion, while simpler beaded netting became popular as grave goods. These “beaded cloaks” have been found on New Kingdom mummies, revealing that beaded accessories continued to be an important part of ancient Egyptian funerary rituals for centuries.

For more amazing archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archive.