Textiles in Ancient Near Eastern ritual and cultic practices. An introduction

Textiles represent a specific component of material culture. They are characteristic products of human endeavour before the emergence of urbanization, and they have always played a communicative role in religion. The properties of textiles as coverings of bodies, objects and spaces, as well as the operational sequence of their production, make textiles and relevant tools characteristic means for conveying ideas of membership and worldview, as well as for expressing religious interaction with supernatural beings. This volume aims to explore the role played by textiles in the ancient rituals of the Near East, including Egypt and Iran, from the third to the first millennium BC. The objective is to present an in-depth analysis of textiles and their ritual use in different historical periods and cultural contexts of the ancient Near East for the first time, as well as to contribute to the current scholarly debate on ritual studies in the light of textile research and development as a new and interdisciplinary field of studies within Humanities.