Textile Studies

Methchild Flury-Lemberg, a leading authority on historic textiles and the former curator of Switzerland’s Abegg Foundation Textile Museum, has reported strong similarities between the Shroud’s fabric and fragments of fabrics produced in the Middle East about 2,000 years ago.

According to Flury-Lemberg, the cloth’s finishing, its selvage (the edge of a fabric that is woven so that it will not fray or ravel), and a very distinctive joining seam, all closely resemble unique ancient textiles found in tombs of the Jewish palace-fortress Masada. The Masada fabrics have been reliably dated to between 40 B.C.E. and 73 C.E.. Flury-Lemberg’s detailed analysis of the Shroud’s fabric—an exceptionally fine quality, z-twist, 3-over-1-herringbone patterned linen cloth—is evidence that it was manufactured in the Middle East on a Roman-period Egyptian or Syrian loom.

The unique, nearly invisible seam is particularly interesting and telling. The seam is about 8 centimeters from one edge. It appears that the cloth was cut lengthwise to remove some of the fabric’s width and then expertly and very distinctively seamed in a way that preserved the selvage (the finished edges produced on the loom). This nearly invisible style of seaming is consistent with the Masada fabrics and is unknown in medieval Europe.

Previously, Gilbert Raes, of the Ghent Institute of Textile Technology in Belgium, identified the herringbone twill as a pattern that was common in the Middle East during the first century. Raes had also discovered that the Shroud’s fabric contained, within the weave itself and thus possibly introduced on the loom, microscopic traces of a Middle East cotton variety known as Gossypium herbaccum. The evolving Talmudic traditions (Mishna) permitted linen to be woven on looms used for cotton but never on looms used for wool. While loose wool and even twentieth century nylon fibrils have been found on the Shroud, no wool has been found woven into the cloth as would likely be the case for looms in medieval Europe. Because the wool and the nylon are loose, they are likely contaminants. Flury-Lemberg’s and Raes’ evidence strongly suggests that the fabric of the Shroud of Turin is a Middle East fabric used in Israel around the time of Jesus.