| Description |
“Part of a coverlet or hanging from Bawit (?) (sic). The allover (sic) design is composed of plain band alternating with figured ones. The figured bands have compound borders consisting of a plain band and one occupied by trefoils linked by half-circles. Fabulous beings and symmetrical plant forms comprise the motifs of the figured bands. The ground is dark pink, and the dividing borders and figures are worked in dull red, beige, medium pink, blue-green, and black. The weave is tapestry, worked entirely in wool, 7 x 38 [warp : weft per square cm]. The warp has been dyed. All yarn is S-twist. Seventh century. Remarks: The fanciful nature of the figures, the trefoil borders, and the general organization of the design all recall the much earlier banded embroidered textile found in Noin Ula, which has Hellenistic elements in its design (Trever 1932, pl. 3, 7). For notes on the presumed find site of [this] textile see the remarks for Number 37 [CAS 0389-2380]. [Regarding textiles in this group, DL Carroll # 41-72 (CAS 0389-2382, -2384, -2389, -2390, -2391, -2392, -2393, -2396, -2399, -2401, -2405, -2409, -2410, -2411, -2414, -2415, -2416, -2417, -2419, -2420, -2422, -2423, -2424, -2427, -2434, -2435, -2436, -2453, -2454, -2457, -2579, -2580, -2581, -2582, -2599):] After the Arab conquest in the mid-seventh century, Coptic textile design changed its character, moving ever more distant from its classical Roman and Greek sources. In part, this was a reaction against Byzantine culture, associated in the Coptic mind with oppression. Contributing to the change may have been Islamic prohibitions against depicting human and animal figures. Such figures when they appear in Coptic textiles of the later periods become increasingly abstract to the point of being virtually unrecognizable.†[From Looms and Textiles of the Copts by Diane Lee Carroll (San Francisco, CA: Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences, No. 11, 1988); Catalog # 43, pp. 45, 136, 147; color plate, p. 146.] |
