> Roman Egypt preserves a much larger slice of our evidence than any other place in the ancient world. This comes down to climate (as do most things); Egypt is a climatically extreme place. On the one hand, most of the country is desert and here I mean hard desert, with absolutely minuscule amounts of precipitation. On the other hand, the Nile River creates a fertile, at points almost lush, band cutting through the country running to the coast. The change between these two environments is extremely stark [...]
> That in turn matters because while Egypt was hardly the only arid region Rome controlled, it was the only place you were likely to find very many large settlements and lots of people living in such close proximity to such extremely arid environments (other large North African settlements tend to be coastal). And that in turn matters for preservation.
I wonder how authentic the hat must be after restoration? And how exactly restoration is done ? It seems restoration had to be funded so must be some elaborate process.
Presuming they were careful to preserve the area of the hat surface, likely very authentic. If it doesn't have any creases, there's precious little you can do to reshape a given convex piece of felt. More oblate/more circular is really about it.
Now, felt can be reshaped easily with steam-level heat - but that would require a conscious effort.
"What the ancient Romans wore may not be among the most pressing questions facing archaeologists, but it is one that attracts interest among the general public."
Us: “wOwWw”
The Roman: “that old thing?” I always find this juxtaposition funny. Like someone finding my old baseball cap in 2k years and fawning over it. Eat your heart out boys.
> The other two are housed at the Whitworth art gallery in Manchester and a museum in Florence, Italy.
This sentence is somewhere in between funny and unprofessional.
The other hat in England gets an accurate location and a back link, the one in Italy gets a "in some museum in Florence". At least they put the city's name...
Reminds me of a Mitchell and Webb Look skit, where one of them has been working "for years" to ban tourists from Venice... along with the Italians. Keep Venice British!
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 29.7 ms ] thread> That in turn matters because while Egypt was hardly the only arid region Rome controlled, it was the only place you were likely to find very many large settlements and lots of people living in such close proximity to such extremely arid environments (other large North African settlements tend to be coastal). And that in turn matters for preservation.
https://acoup.blog/2022/12/02/collections-why-roman-egypt-wa...
Now, felt can be reshaped easily with steam-level heat - but that would require a conscious effort.
The author thinks Roman had low intellect or something?
Such a snobby comment!
> The other two are housed at the Whitworth art gallery in Manchester and a museum in Florence, Italy.
This sentence is somewhere in between funny and unprofessional. The other hat in England gets an accurate location and a back link, the one in Italy gets a "in some museum in Florence". At least they put the city's name...