Combine the histories and myths of Daedalus, Da Vinci, Archimedes, and St. Joseph into a single person. Now give that guy a wife, one who has learned some practical science from her husband. She invents the umbrella. Sort of.
The umbrella, a device used as a sun shade or rain cover, dates back to almost 3000 BCE. Since the ancient cultures that we know most cluster around the Mediterranean, the primary use of umbrella-like instruments was as fans or canopies to protect mainly the royals, and later the wealthy and aristocratic. Thus, the umbrella in the most ancient sense, was a status symbol.
But the other form of umbrella we modern people know is the collapsible kind–that is, those of us who experience rain in the north (or extreme south). Collapsible umbrellas, invented somewhere between 600 BCE and 50 CE in China, were also more symbolic than functional, at least according to art left behind. The Chinese led the world in innovative designs of the umbrella. Europeans came to know the designs; they just didn’t use them. At least, not until umbrellas were re-invented as a status symbol, eventually to make their way into popular and practical use by schmoes like you and me.
In focusing on the history of the umbrella in ancient times, let’s consider:
- What were umbrellas for?
- Where and when were umbrellas used in ancient history?
- What does the invention and innovation of the umbrella signify?
Personalized Covering Turns Status Symbol
It’s a little hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea that people were hired to walk around holding parasols and umbrellas over aristocrats three thousand years ago. Then again, it’s hard to imagine creating an entire army out of clay to be buried with me or conking 50 servants on the head to “protect” the antechamber of my mausoleum… or serving 100 lobsters at a party for 10 people who eat nothing as they do in HBO’s “Succession.” I think I just don’t think like rich people.
Initially, umbrellas were simply personalized coverings designed to protect individuals from sun or rain. FYI, for this post, let’s use the umbrella term (Ha!) umbrella to mean any kind of covering–parasols, fans and so on–even if the latter are mainly for sun and the former for rain. Personal protective covering. Those early civilizations around the Mediterranean, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, used them mainly as sun shades. As far as we know.
That’s an important point. Whatever umbrellas were made of in 2500 BCE, it was not nylon and aluminum, like today’s fold-up versions. Egyptian and Assyrian parasols were made from leaves, branches, feathers, and sometimes cloth. Chinese umbrellas, even the complicated collapsible varieties, were made from silk, oil, bamboo, and paper. All of these are organic materials, and none of them would have survived unless there was a handy peat bog or hermetically sealed tomb (and even then maybe not). What we know about umbrellas this far back in time is based on the pictures.
But there are pictures of parasols, fans, and umbrellas, dating back to the mid-2000s and forward. Wherever there might be sun, leaders needed shade; wherever wealthy women walked through the streets, they needed to be recognized as such. Occasionally, they might even need to avoid rain, though first and foremost, it was about appearance.
In examples we have from the 5th-7th century BCE Assyria, we have carvings of the king in his chariot. Whether it’s Sargon II (above) trampling over soldiers during the war or Ashurbanipal watching the losing side parade before him, the Assyrian leader’s war chariot had a large parasol as a shade. Probably held in place by the servant in the back, as there’s no known parasol holder. And having people hold them for you was part of the image.
Meanwhile, Ashurbanipal is carved into the wall in his chariot, watching the kingdom of Susa, parade before him. He is up on the top, in that chariot, watching thousands of soldiers, slaves, and captured military equipment roll by. Such ceremonies were designed, like ticker-tape parades, to let the locals celebrate and to humiliate the losers. These parades were one more thing: long. Hours in that hot sun. Maybe the lucky guy standing behind the king could lean a little into the shade, too.
The Art Historian View of the Ancient Mediterranean
The squabbles between cat and mouse are so ancient that some Egyptian painter drew them as a satire, the pharaoh mouse being fanned or shaded by the servant cat. This graphic, some three thousand years old, reaffirms that the Egyptians felt the way that the Assyrians did. The person holding the umbrella is inferior to the person being umbrella-ed. Surely, the sun over the Mediterranean, even centuries ago before climate change, was still searing and brutal, and surely relief must have been desired by those who must endure it. The cartoonists understood this.
Yet, we should be careful about confirmation bias with art. If we only have pictures, then we only have the type of people for whom pictures were made. We have bas-reliefs on the sides of palaces and frescoes on the side of temples and tombs. Thus, we should not be surprised to see emperors, kings, and pharaohs as the receiver of the royal umbrella treatment. If anything, this ancient sketch on a rock helped prove the relationship between fanner and fanee. Because if Egyptian doodlers are using the image, it’s less likely to have been ordered by the pharaoh’s entourage.
It is worth noting that most of the analysis of ancient umbrellas in Egypt or Assyria are written by art historians in art history journals. The archaeologists haven’t found much to get excited about, so it’s the art historians drawing conclusions, again only from the art. I always find myself scratching my head over comments in these art-based histories, such as this one:
The parasol, whatever the conditions of use, ultimately functions as a social symbol satisfies no utilitarian need.
M. C. Miller, “The Parasol: An Oriental Status-Symbol in Late Archaic and Classical Athens.”
I’ll grant that parasols and fans might have been used when they weren’t needed, occasionally, but this seems to assume they were never needed. I don’t want to also make assumptions, but this was written by a British scholar teaching at the University of Toronto. Maybe she just wasn’t that familiar of what it’s like to be in a really hot climate. As a Californian, I can tell you that parasols have a utilitarian need. It may just be that in ancient Egypt, only the royals had the need fulfilled.
However, Toronto Professor Miller digs into both the art and the literature of classical Athens to show how the Greeks began to subtly alter who used the parasol. The reliefs from Egypt and Assyria show male leaders being shaded, but by the time we get to the Grecian urns, it’s young women. According to Miller, Aristophanes the playwright referenced parasols in his plays, in particular giving one as a prop to burly he-man Prometheus, who then pretends he’s a maiden. Hilarity ensues. But it illustrates that by the time the parasol was widely used in 500 BCE Athens and later Rome, the personal shade implement was a feminine implement rather than one for both genders.
The Immortals and the Buddha Also Needed Shade
Similar references to umbrellas occurred in both China and India, from the mid 4th century BCE forward. The Chinese emperor was often depicted with the parasol, signalling the connection between shade and deserving royalty. Among the famous terracotta warriors, the clay army that was placed in Emperor Qin Shihuang’s tomb, the emperor’s chariot was shown with a built-in,broad shade umbrella.
The idea of the royal parasol even made its way into Buddhism. Somewhere around the first or second centuries BCE, the Indian development of Buddhist iconography came to include eight auspicious symbols, the first of which was the parasol. In this notion, the umbrella held high honor as a religious symbol. It both represented the umbrella of the sky over the world (umbrella=heaven) and, given its association with royalty, it became an exalted implement. In its broadest form, the umbrella signified protection, not just from weather but from everything.
The Umbrella Stories Have Legs
Chinese umbrellas were noticeably different from the ones to the West. The fans in Egypt were simple leaves; the parasol of Assyria and Greece might be just a large shade on a pole. If it was heavy, no matter, since it was carried by servants or slaves. Chinese umbrellas, though, were designed at some point to open and collapse. You can see the umbrella ribs of the Qin Emperor’s terra cotta figurine. The emperor’s chariot umbrella eventually would adopt a handle for the pole. In other cases, the handles carried by the servants were made of gold–some of those survive.
However, the idea of the collapsible, personal umbrella that became used by a broader group of people was legendary. And, who better to be associated with it, than China’s legendary inventor Lu Ban. Lu ban was the catch-all guy who was said to invent everything–weapons of warfare, siege weapons, handy household tools, you name it. He probably was a real carpenter, but by the time the legend was done, he was kind of the patron god of carpenters. He invented the saw.
But it was his wife, Yun, who got credit for the umbrella. The story is that she saw him going to work in sun and rain and wished for him to stay dry and out of the sun. Having seen some of his work, she thought of using bamboo like tree branches attached upward. There you guy, an umbrella that opens and closes. Either Yun or someone else then fashioned a removable wooden peg at the top, which allowed the canopy to collapse.
Chinese umbrella makers experimented over the years with materials. The big challenge with ancient umbrellas was the heaviness of thick cloth, even if bamboo was a light wood. The Chinese used silk, which was tighter woven and a lighter fabric, but it still was not light. When paper was invented, the ancient scientists applied oil to it to make it waterproof, and the collapsible oil-paper umbrella was born. This would form a model that succeeded for centuries, although we don’t have physical remains, just the paintings.
The Story Takes Legs of its Own
Thus, in the East and the West, umbrellas were protective devices reserved for the wealthiest. They stayed available for royal entourages through other historical regimes. Although the Europeans were aware of them throughout the Middle Ages, they didn’t catch on. Certainly, as rainy England rose to power, none of the entourage carried umbrellas for the royals.
Japan seemed more familiar with the implement, and it might have been used by a more generalized population. During the 13th century CE in Japan, ghost stories in literature, art, and stage were common. A new character cropped up: the Kasa-obake. At first this was a man inside a collapsed umbrella, peering out with one eye. Later, it came to be an umbrella monster–with no human inside–only a ghost to haunt the hapless man, who might have left his umbrella behind.
Europeans like Van Gogh certainly would have seen umbrellas when they traveled. At least in this painting, which Van Gogh copied, umbrellas are in many hands, both the wealthy and the working class, perhaps, as they cross Edo bridge in a rainstorm.
The Europeans eventually took the hint. An early 18th century Paris merchant discovered a way to make a folding umbrella that didn’t weigh ten pounds. It caught on first with the royals, as usual, with a certain Princess Palatine waxing enthusiastic. That soon made it the toast of Paris, which made it the toast of all aristocracy. Although the standard history of umbrellas doesn’t point this out, this innovations happened just as viva l’revolution was spreading. Whatever the aristocrats once had, now the common man could have as well.
New materials, lighter weight metals and lighter weight cloths, were also available. Pocket umbrellas and nylon appeared in the early 20th century, and now we can all use a folding umbrella, just like the good wife Yun envisioned.
So, the next time you pop open that umbrella, remember that you are walking in the footsteps of Egyptian, Chinese, and Assyrian royalty. Since you are both shader and shadee, you can decide whether you are the royal or the servant.
Favorite name for umbrella: bumbershoot. I understand that the inventor intended the name to be brella but hesitated.
I liked the word bumbershoot, too, but opted to try to not cover everything there was to say about umbrella history. My research-bot says that an American in the 1870s coined the term to purposely merge umbrella and parachute, and was referring also to people jumping from hot air balloons with this newfangled parachute thing that looked like an umbrella. Could also be true. Definitely did not originate as a British word.
I’ve always loved the mechanism of folding umbrellas. In middle school I made a little dollhouse-sized one that could open and close. But I don’t carry one around very often, and I think having someone else always trying to hold it for me would just be annoying. But I guess if it was their full-time job they’d be really good at it.