ABSTRACT
How we can distinguish distinctive clothing in images from the past, when our knowledge of ancient dress is quite limited? In this chapter, I will examine this issue in regard to how we might imagine Judean priestly clothing: the clothing worn by priests only within the Jerusalem Temple compound.1 This Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, and thereafter priests no longer undertook their sacred duties in their distinctive clothing in this place. In order to identify images of it accurately, we need to pay very close attention to texts, and also the different languages of texts. However, our understanding of these texts is based on how well translators can properly “see” clothing described in them. I will consider two images: firstly, a representation of the historian Josephus found in a ninth-century manuscript in the Berne Burgerbibliothek, and, secondly, the representation of a kneeling Judean man on Roman coins that were issued after the destruction of the Temple, in the first century CE.
