Sacred vestments and profane fabrics: textiles in the Delian inventories

Over several decades, even several centuries, the inventories of Delos recorded the offerings deposited each year in the different sanctuaries of the sacred island. Among them are numerous dedications of clothing and fabrics, the descriptions of which testify to the lexical and semantic inventiveness of the sanctuary administrators. Parallel to the offerings, the inventories also mention textiles with multiple functions. The aim here is to examine the terminology specific to the Delian texts in order to determine what information this semantic study can provide: textiles in Delos are vectors of multiple identities, since they both testify to particular religious practices but also constitute a social index of the Hellenistic period.