Some nine masses of fibers excavated from Amarna in the 1920s were presented to the British Museum as possible pillow stuffings. Recent analyses by optical and scanning electron microscopes have identified wool, flax, cotton, animal fur, feathers, and wood slivers among them. However, the presence of cotton fibers in four of the samples is problematic. Cotton was unlikely to have been found in Egypt before the Roman period. In the 1980s, gerbil activity was noted at Amarna, leading the author to speculate whether the samples could be intrusive deposits of nest linings, dating any time from the Roman period to present day.