---
node: fashion_second_intermediate
type: fashion
slug: second_intermediate_period_fashion
title: "Fashion in the Second Intermediate Period"
lead: "In the Second Intermediate Period the Near Eastern Hyksos ruled the north; Egyptian linen dress was kept, but Near Eastern elements such as weaving technology are thought to have been added."
published: 2026-07-28
updated: 2026-08-15
---

## Overview

Egypt spent this period divided between a Theban kingdom in the south and the Hyksos, rulers of Near Eastern origin, in the Delta — and the division shows in dress mainly as a matter of technology rather than of style. Egyptian linen convention held; what changed was how cloth could be made.

## Key garments and style

The wardrobe stays recognisably Middle Kingdom: the linen shendyt for men, the narrow sheath for women, bead collars and simple wigs. The significant arrival is the vertical two-beam loom, which replaced the horizontal ground loom that Egypt had used for millennia. A vertical loom weaves wider cloth faster, and it is the precondition for the voluminous, elaborately pleated New Kingdom garments that follow; without it the next period's dress would not have been possible.

The Hyksos are generally credited with bringing it, along with the horse and chariot, the composite bow and new bronze-working. That attribution is reasonable but worth stating carefully — the Hyksos are known largely through later Egyptian accounts written by the people who expelled them, and the archaeology of Avaris shows a settled Levantine population rather than the invasion those accounts describe.

## Transition

The Theban reconquest reunited Egypt under the New Kingdom, which took the new loom and turned it to the finest pleated linen Egypt ever produced.