Dyeing

Wool and flax were the most commonly used materials for making cloth. The natural colour of flax, from which linen was made, was greyish white. Linen was not generally dyed, but bleached to give it a brighter whiteness.
Wool can have various natural colours, varying from white to dark brown and black. If people wanted materials to have a different colour, the wool could be dyed. There are also indications that in Mesopotamia materials were dyed already in the third millennium.