Colour and Cultural Maintenance in Ancient Babylonia: Contextualizing Wool Dye Recipe BM 62788 + BM 82978

This work explores the historical relationship between colour and cultural maintenance in ancient Babylonia by examining a fragmentary cunei- form tablet containing wool dyeing recipes from the mid first millennium bce (BM 62788 + BM 82978). The present analysis is comprised of three sections. First, an introduction to colour maintenance and its relation to cultural identity in modern and ancient societies (§ 1). Second, a philological and technical over- view of tablet BM 62788 + BM 82978 (§ 2). And finally, a return to the question of the historical context of colour maintenance that focuses on the Babylonian clothing ceremony known as lubuštu (§ 3). What follows seeks to move beyond a solely technological reconstruction of a Babylonian wool dye recipe, with the aim of demonstrating the text’s importance to the cultural history of colour maintenance.