Notes on the Thebes Of tablets

The paper discusses the purpose of the Of textile records at Thebes. It is argued that while the women workers are weavers and decorators of cloth, the men are finishers, who fulled and repaired the cloth and added minor decoration to it. It is also suggested that the wool categorised as ku which is always used by the women decorators and male finishers may well have been imported from Cyprus, as J. L. Melena has proposed. In an Appendix, the evidence for finishing in the L CLOTH and Od WOOL records at Knossos is discussed.