Catalog Number
|
Catalog Number |
CAS 0389-2423 | |
| 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. 800-900 CE | |
| Collection Name | Rietz Collection of Textiles | |
| Materials | Wool | |
| Description | “Rectangle cut from the shoulder area of a tunic. Most of the piece is the natural color of undyed wool. The ornamentation, now in dark-brown (sic) yarn, may have been purple originally. Detached, linear cartouches interrupted by a rectangular panel containing the figure of a snake, light on a dark ground, compose the clavus decoration. The roundel has a spiral wave frame and contains the figure of a bird (a guineafowl? (sic)), with one leaf in its beak and another filling the space behind its head. The material is wool, woven in a near-tabby, 16-15 x 13-11 [warp : weft per square cm], with tapestry inserts, 8 x 38 [warp : weft per square cm]. The tapestry roundel is set in a lentoid, a fact not immediately obvious because the points of the figures are woven in the same color and material as the main ground, but in tapestry, not tabby. The purpose of this was not decorative, but rather a means to avoid an abrupt transition between the ground and the insert that might weaken the textile. All yarn is S-twist. Ninth century. Remarks: The use of a lentoid as a technical, not a decorative, feature occurs on several other Rietz textiles and may be an indication of a particular weaver, workshop, or region. Serpents were important symbols in several first-millenium (sic) religions, often symbolizing wisdom. They had a special place in Gnosticism, in part due to the serpent in the Garden of Eden who instructed Eve. [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 # 51, pp. 82, 136, 156-157.] | |
| Dimensions (cm) | Width = 22.0, Length = 9.5 | |