خلاصة:
In 1982 an elite burial was discovered in Arjan, near modern Behbahan. The presence inside the bronze coffin of cotton
textiles and gold bracteates suggesting the use of garments dated to the waning years of the Elamite Empire. The main purpose of
this study is to examine the implications of this discovery for the history of garments and, most particularly, to offer a new historical
understanding regarding the origins of cotton and its introduction into the Near East.
ملخص الجهاز:
The presence inside the bronze coffin of cotton textiles and gold bracteates suggesting the use of garments dated to the waning years of the Elamite Empire.
Two main characteristics of the textile material found in the Arjan tomb are of utmost significance for the history of Elamite and ancient Near Easter textiles: the type of material used (cotton) and the type of recognizable clothing (a garment or shroud containing a fringe that included decorative embroidered rosettes and an upper garment containing golden bracteates).
21 Most interestingly, as in the case of the Arjan tomb, a bath- tub type coffin found at Qal'at al-Bahrain dated to the late Achaemenid period includes textile remains of what could perhaps be cotton fiber (Højlund and Andersen 1994: 415; Haerinck 2002: 246).
This date not only places the Arjan evidence squarely in between the time of the Assyrian king Sennacherib and the Persian king Xerxes but draws a demarcation line in the chronological timeline, opening the door to a number of general questions regarding trade routes and the participation of cotton in the history of Near Eastern textiles before the creation of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.
Conversely, the presence of cotton-made garments in the Arjan tomb offers assured evidence of the elite status of this textile during the late Neo-Elamite period.
In the absence of written records one can only guess that, as evidenced by the presence of cotton textiles in the Arjan tomb, these relationships came to be sustained during the late Neo-Elamite period and continued to further prosper with the emergence of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.