Just to lift this up with a very minor information.
In 1960, Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin discovered a cave located in the Dead Sea area, near
Ein-Gedi, that contained one of the largest caches of ancient documents and personal correspondence dating from the time of Bar Kochba, known as the Cave of Letters. Along with the letters, he also found fragments of clothing and footwear - the only material remains we have of Jewish clothing of the period.
Contemporary evidence testifies that at the time of Jesus, the basic items of Jewish clothing was not too different from what the other inhabitants of the Greco-Roman world have been wearing - indeed many of the names of clothing in Hebrew were loanwords from Greek or Latin. What set the Jews apart from other peoples are the laws of
shatnez (the prohibition of wearing a fabric containing both wool and linen) and
tzitzit (applying tassels on the four corners of the mantle).
The tunics (
haluq) found in the Cave of Letters were sleeveless, woven in two pieces and joined at the shoulders, leaving an opening for the neck (hence the Hebrew name, from
heleq). This method had a ritual advantage: if one piece of the tunic becomes ritually defiled, the other piece would not be afftected by this impurity. The wearer could just remove the ‘unclean’ piece and replace it with a fresh one. The garment is considered finished when the pieces are sewed together and the neck hole finished. It is worth noting that most of the tunics found (except for one child’s linen shirt) were all made of wool - none of the linen textiles in the site had colored, decorative patterns.
Most of the tunics found also bore two parallel strips woven on the tunics, spaced widely apart, so that they descend from the shoulders: these are the
clavi, which is one characteristic of tunics in the Roman period. Yadin has demonstrated that these stripes are referred in the Talmud under the name
'imrah.
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Moses (in tunic and cloak) parting the Sea, from the mid-3rd century synagogue of Dura Europos. Note the
clavi on Moses’ tunic.
Over the tunic is worn the
tallit. As noted in a former post, the
tallit of the period were not similar to the prayer shawls of modern-day Jews (of which it is probably a descendant); these were true cloaks - a huge rectangular sheet which one wraps around oneself, with the
tzitzot attached to the four edges. These were worn by all men, but people of rank (scholars or those who led in prayers) had larger, finer cloaks than those of commoners. The scholar’s
tallit was so big that it completely covered his tunic.
The cloaks in the Cave of Letters were decorated with notched bands, checkerboard patterns, gamma-shaped designs (at the corners), and what appears to be weaver’s marks. The gamma pattern is mentioned in the Talmud Yerushalmi:
There is a colored bent piece like a Greek gamma, one thread to this direction, the other to the other direction, which forms a sign…that is to say, that [the weaver] when he weaves, he forms ornaments like letters…as if he is found to be writing.
These probably have no symbolism and were just decorative patterns.
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Mosaic depicting the Apostles, from the Baptistery of the Arians in Ravenna (5th-6th century AD). They are shown as wearing long, sleeved tunics with
clavi and mantles with H- and gamma-shaped designs at the corners.
As for colors, the evidence we have suggests that women’s clothing tend to be more colorful than men, who usually wore white or off-white clothing (with colored bands) - note the depiction of Moses above. The
Sifre to Deuteronomy (115b) in fact states that “
a woman shall not wear a man’s white garments and a man shall not wear colored garments.” Jewish women, however, were apparently not allowed to wear red garments - which were seen as symbolizing menstrual blood (again note ritual impurity!) and as the color of gentile women.
Tallitot is the Hebrew plural of tallit (taleisim is the Yiddish plural; the singular is tallis), the “prayer shawl” with the four tzitzit (fringes) on the corners most commonly identified with Jews.
It could be likely that she went with a caravan en route to Judea Province (some have estimated that it would take a three to five days’-journey from Nazareth to Judea’s hill country), which was pretty much normal in those days as travelling alone was very dangerous, what with the highway brigands and other dangers of the way. Also, there’s the fact that Mary is a woman - ancient Middle Eastern women can never do anything by themselves in that culture unless watched by a male relation or in a group with other women.
