Derived from the ancient Greek word “skythia”- given to the sprawling grasslands spanning north and east of the Black Sea- the Scythian empire inhabited territories throughout Eurasia from the Black Sea across Siberia to the borders of China from the 11th century BC to the 2nd century AD.  The term’s etymology has a relationship to the Indo-European word “skythes”, meaning shepherd, and signifies the deep relationship between the region, its indigenous vegetation, and the nomadic peoples and animals who lived off the land in deep synergy.

Closely tied to economic circumstances and the rhythms of the earth, nomadism was a mobile way of life centered around livestock herding, pastural growth, and intricate knowledge of the earth.  As P.N. Fedoseev points out in Nomads of Eurasia, it should be noted that “nomadism is sometimes seen as a primitive, backwards phenomena that retarded the development of civilization.”  This is a grave oversimplification based around Eurocentric beliefs and “imperfect knowledge of the facts.”  Nomadic cultures were incredibly adaptive to their surroundings and created complex, original, and sustainable cultures that were often imitated by surrounding sedentary peoples.  While their knowledge and expertise cannot be fully understood from the written texts of Ancient Greece, Assyria, Babylon, and China, ancient artifacts hold an immense amount of knowledge that can unfold with close looking.

As a nomadic warrior empire, Scythians did not typically cultivate earthen soil for agriculture and sustenance but rather, reared herds of domesticated animals on the land including sheep, cattle, horses, goats, and more for sustenance and raw material.  Naturally, woolen protein fiber became a staple building block within cultural traditions for the individual fibrous units had magnificent capacity to be manipulated into greater wholes.  As M.E. Burkett illuminates in The Art of the Felt Maker, tribal Scythian princes were actually thought to have descended from “the bright heaven” or “the white cloud”.

Through felting, spinning, twisting, braiding, weaving, knitting, crocheting, and more woolen textile techniques- Scythian craftsmen and craftswomen created clothing, tools, home textiles, vessels, in addition to architectural membranes used for yurts and other mobile structures making wool fiber a highly valued and sacred material of the region which, to this day, influence the textile traditions of present-day Afghanistan.

The Afghan custom of wearing felt mantles and presenting them to important persons on special occasions emerges from ancient Achaemenid Persian traditions in which felt coats and woven woolen cloths were gifted to kings, satraps, priests, and other high-ranking dignitaries of the Persian court.  As highlighted by Veronika Gervers at the Royal Ontario Museum in The Art of the Felt Maker, “the social significance of Afghan felt coats,”and the embroidery imbued upon them, “could be considered more important than their practical aspects,” such as warmth and protection.

Primarily gifted to men, males were also the individuals traditionally involved in the making of the mantles as well.  Due to the nonwoven nature of felt as a textile, felt mantles were not typically cut from uniform lengths of yardage but rather, were made from a single piece of felt crafted using a mould.  Moulds were used so the textile would not adhere to itself during the wet felting process.  If gaps in the garment’s construction called for additional felt material, additional hand piecework was often required to fill in the missing areas by hand. 

Felt piecework traditions likely developed from ancient Scythian skin, lether, or hidework manipulation techniques that would have also typically been performed by men.  The thick nature of the felted textile also required special strength and care in terms of stitching and embroidering through the bulky material.  While Afghan embroidery traditions are held today by both men and women, it is likely that in this particular case, the embroidery techniques would have been performed by men.

Works Cited

Basilov, V. N. Nomads of Eurasia. Los Angeles, CA: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 1989. 

Bunn, Stephanie. Nomadic Felts. London: British Museum, 2010. 

Burkett, M. E. The Art of the Felt Maker. Kendal (Cumbria): Abbot Hall Art Gallery, 1979.

Emery, Irene. The Primary Structures of Textiles. Washington, DC: The Textile Museum, 1966.

Dupaigne, Bernard and Francoise Cousin. Afghan Embroidery. Pakistan: Ferozsons (Pvt.) Ltd, 1993.

Gordon, Beverly.  Feltmaking: Traditions, Techniques, and Contemporary Explorations.  New York, NY: Watson-Guptill Publications, a division of Billboard Publications, 1980. 

Harvey, Janet. Traditional Textiles of Central Asia. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 1996. 

Lindisfarne, Nancy, and Bruce Ingham. Languages of Dress in the Middle East. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, in Association with the Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, SOAS, 1997. 

Mullins, Willow. Felt. Oxford: Berg, 2009.