Taking a Closer Look at an Odd Pair of Very, Very Old Socks
I can’t stop staring at these socks. A pair of very, very old socks made in Egypt sometime between A.D. 250 and A.D. 420.
While putting together Threaded’s Stocking Series (Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4), I did a double take when I came upon this different type of foot covering. Maybe it’s the angle of the photo, or the split toe style meant to be worn with sandals, but they’re disorienting, right? They don’t look 1,600 years old, but they don’t look new either. And they’re bright red! I don’t expect something that’s over 1,000 years old to look so vibrant. Maybe, too, it’s the size. They’re so long that they look as if they could fit Shaquille O’Neal’s famous size 23 feet—if his feet were also really narrow. After I incredulously posted this image on Facebook this past week and remarked on the antiquity’s unique qualities, a friend most succinctly responded with just: #ancientaliens.
But let’s get serious for a minute. These socks, and their provenance, can be found at the Victoria and Albert Museum:
The Romano-Egyptian socks were excavated in the burial grounds of ancient Oxyrhynchus, a Greek colony on the Nile in central Egypt at the end of the 19th century. They were given to the Museum in 1900 by Robert Taylor Esq., ‘Kytes,’ Watford. He was executor of the estate of the late Major Myers and these items were selected among others from a list of textiles as ‘a large number of very useful examples.’