128 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



well to ornamental expression. And this I gather from specimens of 

 it made probably by Copts, who decorated it with close loops of wool. 



Here is an exceptionally good example of a shaggy-faced floor or 

 couch cover treated in this manner. The stjde of the design may be 

 called Egypto-Roman. The center is surrounded by a bordering of 

 rectangular corner shapes linked together with intervening star 

 forms. It is interesting to note the interlocked device within the 

 left-hand star — a device which I think is of Chinese origin. We 

 find it in Turkestan and Asiatic rugs, as well, of course, as the 

 swastika or crooked cross — another constantly occurring emblem in 

 Chinese ornament. 



Of more distinctly Roman character is the design in this next ex- 

 ample of looped worsted weaving or embroidery produced possibly 

 by Copts in the second or third century. Here we have but a corner 

 of a floor covering of the period, enough, however, to indicate that the 

 whole of the field was covered with groups, like the single one here, 

 of cupids in a boat. The border was narrow and of overlapping 

 leaves, and a medallion, containing a face, in each corner of the whole 

 rug. 



Such a textile may represent the " Sardian pile carpets " mentioned 

 by the Eg^'pto-Roman writer, Athenaeus, of Naukratis, a place now 

 identified with Tell-el-Bareet, near the Rosetta branch of the Nile. 

 Sir George Birdwood, in his treatise on the " Antiquity of Oriental 

 Carpets," gives several interesting quotations from the " Banquets of 

 the Learned," by Athenseus, to prove the considerable use in the third 

 century A. D. of floor coverings — but judged by the light of fabrics 

 discovered in the disused Egyptian cemeteries, already referred to, 

 none seems to indicate in a convincing way that cut-pile carpets or 

 any carpets of distinctly Eastern design were amongst the usual 

 household goods of either Greeks or Romans. We have, I think, to 

 look elsewhere for the earliest of such things. 



Cut -pile fabrics were, I think, first produced by the Chinese. For 

 more than 2,000 years before Buddhism reached them, they had pre- 

 served to themselves a monopoly in the cultivation, spinning, and 

 employment of silk. It is the most delicate of all fibers or filaments 

 for textile purposes. In the possession of this monopoly, and of a 

 prolonged skill in the ornamental arts, the Chinese seem to have de- 

 veloped every sort of known process of ornamental and complicated 

 weaving — so, at least, one must infer from their traditions and rec- 

 ords. The evil of seclusion which had hidden these things from the 

 rest of the world was gradually lifted by the trade started by Asiatic 

 peoples living outside the Great Wall, who were the means of com- 

 municating to the northern districts of the old Persian Empire, two 

 centuries or so B. C, some knowledge of Chinese manufactures and 

 ornamental design. The trade in its course affected Asiatic crafts- 



