| Description |
“Tunic fragment with roundel ornament. What remains of the tunic body is beige, while the ground of the ornament is dark yellow. The roundel carries a narrow border of rhomboids and a wider border with filler-motifs of paired dots. Within the inner circle is a formal arrangement of four birds, two chrysalises or locusts (cicadas), and two symmetrical floral motifs. In the center is a disk containing a stylized insect motif. The colors are blue-green, yellow, brown, and dull red. The roundel is a separate piece that was whip-stitched to the body of the tunic. The warp of the roundel lies at right angles to the warp direction of the tunic. Both parts are wool tapestry. The thread count of the body is 10 x 22 [warp : weft per square cm], of the ornament, 6 x 48 [warp : weft per square cm]. All yarn is S-twist. Ninth or tenth century. Remarks: Insects were sometimes depicted on late antique gems. A personal or a family symbol may be represented on [this] textile. The unusual life cycle of some cicadas, called seventeen-year locusts, have made them symbols of longevity or immortality, an idea expressed in the myth of Tithonos. He wished for eternal life, but forgot to wish for lasting youth. Eventually he turned into a cicada and chirped on into eternity. In Plato’s beautiful little dialogue about love, the Phaedrus, Socrates tells about cicadas, how they live without nourishment and when their time to die arrives they are able to overcome death, becoming instead messengers and informers for the Muses. Jeweled effigies of cicadas were made in the early Medieval period, perhaps in reference to one of these concepts. [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 # 59, pp. 136, 166-167.] |
