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Volume 100 No. 1
January 2000
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Aegean Breechcloths, Kilts, and the Keftiu Paintings
Paul Rehak
In discussions of Aegean costume, considerable attention has been paid to the change in the representation of presumed Aegean natives (the Keftiu) in several Egyptian tomb paintings of the 18th Dynasty. The earlier tombs depict men wearing breechcloths with codpieces and backflaps; the later tombs show men in kilts. The date of this change has usually been thought to coincide with a shift in power in the Aegean at the end of LM IB, from Minoans (with codpieces) to Mycenaeans (in kilts).
But both breechcloths and kilts are worn on Crete at least from MM II times, and neither costume is generally worn by early Mycenaeans. Breechcloths with codpieces characterize certain types of Minoan activity (hunting, farming, bull-leaping, and ritual performances), whereas shorts appear in early Mycenaean scenes of hunting and fighting, replaced in LH IIIA-B frescoes by tunics; most Mycenaean representations of kilts are quite late (LH IIIB).
Rather than an indication of ethnicity, differences in Aegean costume may refer to age, status, and activity, and the change in costume of the Keftiu embassies recorded in Egyptian tombs may reflect more the type of men the Egyptians saw than any political structures that the garments might have represented.
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