Textile archaeology and the related field of experimental textile archaeology have been represented to varying degrees in different European countries. While Scandinavia started to explore these fields very early based on local archaeological textile collections, France developed a suitable approach only much later. Within the more specific field of Near Eastern archaeology, research is even more complex because textiles, like other organic materials, have rarely survived in archaeological contexts. Archaeologists and historians therefore need to use all other available sources such as archaeological artefacts, texts, and iconography. This chapter analyses the pioneering but largely forgotten research of Léon Heuzey, who as a teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century tried to reconstruct Sumerian costume by using modern textiles and live models.