Have you seen this sock? – Part 2

Last seen in Egypt during the 1913-14 excavations of Antinoë, the other three socks pictured appear to have made their way to various English institutions. However, where is the 4th?

An image of four cross-knit nalbound socks that were excavated in Antinoë. The top one, the largest, is outlined in a red box and designated as number 4. It has a split toe and appears to have been colorfully striped. There is evidence of damage on the tip of the largest toe, the ball of the big toe, and at the back of the heel.
Reproduced with permission of Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/
Modified from the original by the addition of numbers and the red box.

The original image was taken by John de Monins Johnson during the 1913-14 excavation of Antinoë for the Graeco-Roman branch of the Egypt Exploration Fund. The glass negative of which is now housed in the Griffith Institute. Their online catalog, http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/johnson/jo10-13.html, shows the image rotated 180 degrees with the missing sock at the bottom. An excellent overview of Johnson’s role in documenting the excavations, is available here in Elisabeth O’Connell’s article “John de Monins Johnson’s 1913/14 Egypt Exploration Fund expedition to Antinoupolis (Antinoë).” Fig. 104 shows the socks, but there are also many images of other items excavated at that time as well as information regarding several other socks and nalbound fragments distributed by the EEF in 1914-15.

Note: At the time of the excavations, the socks were presumed to be knitted as the differences between the crossed knitting and cross-knit nalbinding techniques had not yet been described.

Map of Egypt showing cities of the Roman Empire with Antinoopolis highlighted.
From the Roman Empire view of “Antinoopolis: a Pleiades place resource,” in Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places, 2017. (CC BY 3.0 US) https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/756518

So if you happen to see this sock (#4 above), please let me know via Contact.

I will blog about the other three socks in future posts.

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Antinoë, also known as Antinoopolis, is located along the Nile near modern day El-Shaikh Ebada. ††††††

The Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places is a great source for finding the locations of ancient cities that may not show up on a modern map.



Additions to the Annotated Bibliography:

Drew Bear, M., DARMC, R. Talbert, Sean Gillies, Johan Åhlfeldt, Jeffrey Becker, and Tom Elliott, "Antinoopolis: a Pleiades place resource," in Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places, Last modified Sep 01, 2017 10:59 PM. Accessed on June 21, 2019. https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/756518

O’Connell, Elisabeth R. "John de Monins Johnson’s 1913/14 Egypt Exploration Fund expedition to Antinoupolis (Antinoë)" In Antinoupolis II: Scavi e materiali III, ed. R. Pintaudi, 415–66. Florence: Istituto Papirologico G. Vitelli, 2014.

Author: Anne Marie Decker

Nalbinding Researcher

One thought on “Have you seen this sock? – Part 2”

  1. Pingback: Dashing visits to the Bolton, Ashmolean, and New Walk Museums – Nalbound

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