Catalog Number
|
Catalog Number |
CAS 0389-2410 | |
| Category | Textiles | |
| Object Name | Coptic textile fragment | |
| Culture | Coptic Egyptian | |
| Global Region | North Africa | |
| Country | Egypt | |
| State/Prov./Dist. | ||
| County | ||
| Other Geographic Data | unknown | |
| Maker's Name | Unknown | |
| Date of Manufacture | ca. 900-1000 CE | |
| Collection Name | Rietz Collection of Textiles | |
| Materials | Linen; Wool | |
| Description | “Strip cut from a patterned tunic. The original textile of which this is a portion appears to have had an overall design organized around rows of battlement meander. The meander is dark blue and is decorated with six-petaled rosettes. The spaces delineated by the bends in the meander are filled with tau motifs, with bifurcated bases, and are flanked by large, six-petaled rosettes. The ground is tan, and the motifs are worked in black, tan, red, yellow, light blue, and pink. The weave is tapestry, wool and linen [S-twist] weft on linen two-ply Z-twist warp, 9 x 56 [warp : weft per square cm]. Tenth century. Remarks: Much of what characterizes Coptic art is absent from this colorful textile with its completely nonrepresentational decoration. [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 # 63, pp. 136, 170-171.] | |
| Dimensions (cm) | Width = 5.0, Length = 39.0 | |