Reading of Cloth

 

This is a Coptic tapestry in the archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was found in Egypt and is from somewhere between year 300 and 499. It is made entirely of wool.

As I doused into the textile history of Egypt, I found that this is only a fragment of textile and belongs to the Byzantine era of Constantine, from 395 to 641. The Coptic tapestries of 4^th and 5^th centuries depicted mythical figures with allegorical references to religion. Romans and Greeks extensively influenced Egypt, for it was first a province of Rome and then of the Greek Byzantines. For both the Pharaonic Egyptians and the Greeks, clothing was suggestive of the social and economic status, and was ubiquitous to the social strata for the Romans. The copts wore tunics made of plain wool or linen and were adorned with narrow bands, called clavi (singular: clavus) that extended downwards from the shoulders, pairs of bands on the sleeves, and square, oval or round tapestry inserts on the shoulders and lower front.

                                                                             

The Clavi were decorated and generally purple. However, the Byzantines made new regulations to restrict the use of opulent elements like silk, purple dyes and gold thread to the imperial classes. The lower classes made imitations of their imperial styles, like dyeing red over blue to make imitation purple. It is clearly evident that the ornamental border was cut out and reused on a relatively newer piece of cloth, and is not made of silk but wool, this piece could belong to someone from a lower group. Also, the dye is not a purple but brownish, which could be a result of dyeing red over a darker blue. The dyes were derived from madder, indigo, saffron, the murex shell, and the kermes insect.

Around 300 BCE, sheep were imported from India and China. But Egyptians did not use wool because it was considered ritually unclean and therefore linen was used. However, wool became common during the time of Roman conquest around 30 BCE. Romans preferred wool and also, it was easier to dye. Linen had to be soaked in an acidic mordant for it to take on color hence it may be costlier and was preferred by the owner despite the hot weather conditions. This is another evidence to the fragment belonging to a lower class dweller.

The cloth piece was excavated and found in such a facile state because of the burial practices and dry climate of Egypt. The deceased buried fully clothed in decorative ceremonial tapestries in the dry hot sands of Upper Egypt lead to efficient preservation of the textiles through the ages.

 Hence the cloth fragment must be an ornament to a burial clavus.

With the Byzantine Empire coming into reign, allowed for trade routes extend further. During this period, Egypt got its raw silk from China through Syria and an extension of Silk Road called the Persian Royal Road.

The 4^th and the 5^th centuries are evident of upcoming ornamental variations with naturalistic representations of birds, flowers, fruits, and mythological figures brought back by Egyptian weavers studying in Persia.

Another vindictive factor that this is a burial cloth is the motif of the bird in the centre.  Birds have numerous meanings in Coptic funerary art. This is because it is difficult to recognize the kind of bird considering the stylized nature of depictions. The bird, plausibly, is an eagle, that guards the door to paradise. It could also symbolize the “Christ who takes the Christian captive to heavens as the eagle carried its prey.” The foliage at the back represents paradise.

 The plant with three leaves, in the front, could be symbolic of the Ansate Cross or Ankh that was adopted by the Coptic Church of Egypt. The symbol of cross is an old Egyptian hieroglyph meaning life. The symbol is also a key to unlock hidden mysteries of the kingdom of dead and was often used in the funeral rites. It also represents the tree of life with its trunk and foliage.

 In Egyptian Mythology, a particular sycamore tree was a gateway between life and death.

The Greco-Roman clavi, often comprise of elements indicating hopes for assistance from the gods in the afterlife. The Coptic clavi, also known as the stelae, translated similar ideologies into a more Christian oriented format, still keeping the Greco-Roman elements applicable, when required. The most common instance is the use of the architectural border. This design is picked up from the architectural borders of a temple, possibly aiming to signify ‘house of gods’, that is, hoping to find a home in the afterlife. This is reinforced, also true in this case, by depicting foliage around the architectural frame that represents paradise.

During the Byzantine era, Agroup of Christian mosaics, also known as the Byzantine mosaics were created in ancient Syria, Palestine and Egypt and Jeruselum, probably had the maximum number of mosaic covered churches.

The ‘Armenian Mosaic’ is the most important, and was discovered near the Damascus gate (the main entrance to the old city of Jeruselum). It depicts a vine with many branches and grape clusters that spring out of a vase. It has an inscription that reads: “For the memory and salvation of all those Armenians whose name the Lord knows." , which means that the room was used to remember the dead and was a mortuary chapel.

This can be seen in the tapestry above, which is very similar to the Armenian Mosaic, but has a similar border as the textile fragment being talked about.

Egypt was constantly trading with the Ethiopians through Nile and its tributaries, justifying a possibility for major Diaspora. Therefore, one explanation to the emergence of such a pattern for the border could also be through the depiction of Harag, which, in Ethiopian bible means tendril of a climbing plant depicted s lines interlaced in a geometrical pattern which was also used to frame a page in the Ethiopian manuscript.