OENAMENTATION OF CARPETS COLE. 129 



men and weavers ; and they seem to have been the pioneers, as it were, 

 in imitating fabrics similar in texture to that of Chinese velvets and 

 the like. These Asiatics had boundless supplies of wool, camel and 

 goat hair, long before they learned how to rear silkworms and cul- 

 tivate them. Rulers of districts along the Chinese trade route recog- 

 nized the value of this Asiatic enterprise in industry at places like 

 the ancient Karakoram, Khotan, Samarcand, Bokhara, Herat, and 

 thus cut-pile manufactures passed on to India and Persia, whose 

 dominion had extended from Turkestan to Asia Minor and Syria, 

 and included, of course, the territories previously governed by Baby- 

 lonians and Assyrians; but there these goods were retained — the 

 Persians being very jealous of them and preventing textile manu- 

 factures from China from passing westward over to the Romans. 



The ornament in the Asiatic and Parthian rugs and carpets, such 

 as they then were, consisted probably of geometric and abstract forms 

 interspersed with adaptations of Chinese emblems. But about the 

 fifth or sixth century A. D., or even a little earlier, they were com- 

 bined by the Persians with devices of their own Sassanian, Roman, 

 Persian, and older Assyrian styles. Wlien, therefore, the Emperor 

 Heraclius took possession of the royal castle of Dastagerd in 627 

 A. D., he found, among other treasures there, carpets, and most of 

 them no doubt were of geometric and abstract ornament, and a less 

 number of realistic ornament. But this ornamentation can have 

 borne few, if any, direct traces of either old Egyptian or Grecian 

 styles of ornament. It had a style of its own, and was alive in 

 Persia up to the time when Mahomet and his conquering Arabs 

 overran that country, Egypt, and elsewhere. It served as a base 

 from which gradually the Saracenic or Mohammedan styles arose. 



Now, for a far longer time than the life of the style we are consid- 

 ering, the Chinese style had been gradually influencing ornamentists 

 with some, at least, of its variety and ingenuity of design that must 

 have proved stimulating to all who came across it. In both abstract 

 and realistic ornamental forms the Chinese style has always been 

 exceedingly rich, as may be gathered from ornament on ancient 

 Chinese bronzes. These have, of course, outlived contemporary 

 weavings and embroideries, which would have been decorated with 

 as much, if not greater, variety of ornament. To put before you a 

 suggestion only of what I mean by the variety and ingenuity of old 

 Chinese ornam.ent such as has lasted with little intrinsic modification 

 for 4,000 years, I have had a slide made from two Chinese bronze 

 vases. 



The vase on the left (pi. 1, fig. 1) is a wine vase made in 780 or 

 769 B. C, and is symmetrically decorated with highly conventional- 

 ized dragon and bird forms adapted to fit into given spaces. These 



97578°— SM 1910 9 



