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Industry : Leather
Leather
Domestication of cattle, sheep, and goats and the hunting of wild animals ensured that, from early times, skins were available for clothing and as wrappings for the dead. Skins occur in predynastic graves, and hides and skins were treated with different substances to produce leather. The most beautiful skins, particularly those of spotted animals, were greatly valued; they were never stripped of hair but were made into seatcoverings, shields, quivers, and special outfits. Less valuable skins such as those of oxen and gazelles were turned into leather and used to make a variety of objects. Coarse, fine, and colored leather was produced and turned into footwear, aprons, straps, belts, and a kind of parchment for writing. THE LEATHER-MAKING PROCESS In earliest times it is likely that several different methods were used for treating skins and hides; they were either simply dried or were cured by means of smoke, salt, or ocherous earths or were softened with fat, urine, or dung. True tanning, with substances containing tannin or tannic acid, was also practiced in the Predynastic Period, probably using the pods of Acacia arabica as the tanning agent since they contain about 30 percent tannin. There are tomb scenes from the Old Kingdom that show various stages in the leather working process. These include the treatment of a skin in a large jar, either as a preparatory stage in the depilation, cleaning, and softening of the skin or to immerse the skin in a tanning substance. Other scenes show skin being stretched over a trestle table probably so that oil could be worked into it, cutting the skins, and making sandals and leather rope. Tools that are illustrated include the half-moon knife, awl, piercers, and a comb type tool used for stripping the flesh off a hide. Dyed leather was produced as early as the Predynastic Period. The most popular color was red and the leather was probably dyed with madder. Yellow and green also occur, but the exact dyes have not yet been identified. Leather was used for bags, bracelets, archers’ wrist protectors, decoration for the ends of linen bands, cushion covers, parts for chariots and tackle, ropes and cords, seat covers, dog collars, wall hangings, writing material, and articles of clothing such as sandals and loincloths that were made by cutting rows of small slits, thus creating a kind of “network” material. Skins and hides were also utilized to make canopies, tents, and water carriers and to cover shields, while rawhide was employed in chariot construction, to lash the joints of furniture, and to bind blades of tools and weapons to their handles. .
FOOTWEAR
Sandal making, represented in various tomb scenes and in a tomb
model, is also well evidenced by surviving examples of footwear
from, for example, the tomb of Tutankhamun and the town of Kahun. In
the Tomb of Rekhmire at Thebes (Dynasty 18), scenes show the hide
being taken from a pot where it had been softened or tanned. The
skin was further prepared as men beat it with a stone and then
stretched it over a wooden frame to make it supple. Next, the
shoemaker put the prepared leather on his sloping worktable and cut
it into soles or straps, using a knife with a curved blade and a
short handle. Then, using a piercer he made holes in the skin
through which the thongs would be drawn. The workman pulled these
through with his teeth and fastened them with knots, thus producing
the simplest form of sandal. At Kahun the excavators discovered
shoemaker’s tools (a bone awl and copper piercers) as well as a
variety of footwear that included aside from the customary sandals
part of a slipon shoe. Stained red, this had a leather toepiece,
with the hair turned inside, which was stitched to the sole with a
leather thong. The excavator of the site suggested that this and a
couple of other examples demonstrated that shoes (as distinct from
sandals) were just coming into existence at this period (Dynasty
12). At Kahun, old sandals once they had worn out were apparently
recycled; in some of the houses, where the doors had worn down the
sockets in which they pivoted at the threshold, leather pieces (and
particularly old sandals) were placed in the sockets to raise the
surface.
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Industry : Leather
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