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III.—Lettered Egyptian Textiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2011

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The textile is not a wholly suitable material to receive lettering, at any rate in our Western angular alphabets; the stitches have to be very fine to preserve satisfactorily the characteristic forms of letters, and it seems difficult to work a word or sentence satisfactorily into the design. In the best ages of Western ecclesiastical embroidery, texts from Scripture and prayers were avoided; we may find the name of a saint, especially if his attribute is not very obvious, and, more often, the sacred monograms IHC and XP (). In later times examples of lettering in needlework, most familiar to us Englishmen in the ‘sampler’, usually seem to have something of the bizarre about them.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1923

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References

page 73 note 1 Eighth or ninth century, from Sohag. Hall, H. R., Coptic and Greek Texts of the Christian Period, 1905, pl. xciGoogle Scholar.

page 74 note 1 e. g. Budge, , Texts relating to Saint Mena of Egypt, 1909, pl. iGoogle Scholar.

page 74 note 2 Check list of Coptic manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1919Google Scholar, frontispiece; cf. pl. iv, the frontispiece to a volume of A. D. 893, a Virgin and Child, in which monograms each side of the Virgin's head read .

page 74 note 3 i. e. , ‘the Annunciator.

page 74 note 4 Budge, , op. cit., facsimile of fol. 10a of the MS.Google Scholar

page 74 note 5 Griffith, , The Nubian Textsof the Christian Period, Berlin, 1913, p. 14Google Scholar; or my Stories from the Christian East, 1918, p. 37Google Scholar.

page 74 note 6 de Rustafjaell, R., The Light of Egypt, 1909, pl. xlGoogle Scholar: the probable date of the MS. is A. D. 985. Pl. xlviii, ibid., shows the end of a sermon on the Blessed Virgin by St. Epiphanius of Cyprus, dated A. D. 990, with a figure of the preacher in place of a colophon, and on either side of his halo.

page 74 note 7 Sometimes even without a proper name, as a picture in the Vatican Apophthegmata (Zoëga clxix) of a bearded monk ‘standing to prayer’ with the words . See Zoëga's pl. vii.

page 74 note 8 But see no. II below, which may be Asiatic.

page 74 note 9 As for the COACINNIOC (in silk on linen) shown in Dreger's, Künstlerische Entwickelung der Weberei, Vienna, 1904Google Scholar, Tafelband i, pl. 27, the texture—particularly the narrowband of silktapestry—suggests early Arab times, though the form of the Greek letters looks early. For the story of St. Sisinnios or Sousinnios, and for many references to recent literature on these Coptic horsemen. saints, see Professor Perdrizet's, Negotium perambulans in tenebris, Strasbourg, 1922Google Scholar.

page 74 note 10 Of the same class as those which make up no.7 below.

page 74 note 11 See Strzygowski, , Orient oder Rom, pls. iv, vGoogle Scholar.

page 74 note 12 I cite the numbers of the pieces from Mr. Kendrick's, A. F.Catalogue of textiles from burying grounds in Egypt, of which vols. i (1920),Google Scholar ii (1921), and iii (1923) have now appeared. I owe much help to Mr. Kendrick in the preparation of this paper, and all the photographs with which it is illustrated. Reference should be made to his study of the forms of Christian emblems, otherthan lettering, on Egyptian textiles, dealing especially with those in the Victoria and Albert Museum, in the Festschrift (p. 100) just published in Viennain honour of Professor Strzygowski.

page 75 note 1 Crum, , Catalogue of the Coptic MSS. in the British Museum, 1905, pp. 231–2;Google Scholar or von Lemm's Das Triadon, St. Petersburg, 1903, stanza 312.

page 75 note 2 Bock, W., Coptic Figured Textiles in vol. iii of theGoogle ScholarTransactions of the Eighth Archaeological Congress of the Imperial Archaeological Society, Moscow, 1897, pls. xvi-xxi.Google Scholar The first of these was in the Hermitage, when last heard of, and the second in the Golenishchev collection, which is said to have been ceded to the Russian Government.

page 75 note 3 Perhaps of an earlier age, but in another line of descent, are the standing figures in wool-work in the Berlin Museum, with the descriptive lettering and over their heads, described by Strzygowski, op. cit., p. 114, fig. 45. This looks like fifth-century work; the Besselièvre panels would be of the sixth or seventh century.

page 76 note 1 Crum, , Rylands Coptic MSS., 1909, no. 165Google Scholar.

page 76 note 2 Lefebvre, , Rec. des Inscriptions grecques-chrètiennes d'Égypte, 1907, nos. 261,Google Scholar 287; Hall, op. cit., pl. lxvi, no. 2.

page 76 note 3 Hall, , op. cit., pl. xxv, no. 2.Google Scholar

page 76 note 4 Crum, , Rylands Coptic MSS., no. 310Google Scholar; Lefebvre, , op. cit., no. 137 ().Google Scholar

page 76 note 5 Hall, , op. cit., pl. viii, no. 1.Google Scholar

page 76 note 6 Lefebvre, , op. cit., no. 676Google Scholar; Crum, , Rylands Coptic MSS., no. 394Google Scholar.

page 77 note 1 Forrer, , Die früthchristlichen Alterthümer ausAchmim, Strasburg, 1893, Pl. xivGoogle Scholar. In this case too the name, with an epithet, is within an ankh, thus: i.e. ‘Tamin the younger’. In the same plate Forrer shows other ankhs, containing the monogram , and the with and ω within the two side angles.

page 77 note 2 Hall, , op. cit., pl. xvii, no. 1.Google Scholar

page 77 note 3 Crum, , British Museum MSS., no. 1223Google Scholar; Grenfell, and Hunt, , Amherst MSS, no. 72Google Scholar (Τινοûτιѕ); cf. the masculine name , Πζνουτι in Crum, , British Museum MSS., nos. 1085, 1079Google Scholar.

page 77 note 4 In the same document as (see note 1) above.

page 77 note 5 Άπολλώѕ is presumably a shortened form of Άπολώνιοѕ, as Lucas is of Lucanus. ‘Apollo’ was an occasional name in England (e. g. one of the uncles of Samuel Pepys, early in the seventeenth century, was so called). Was this after Apollos or the Greek deity?

page 77 note 6 Except in the Bohairic version of Acts xviii, 24, and xix, 1, which follows, like the Armenian version, the corrector of and a couple of minuscules in reading and .

page 77 note 7 A discussion of the character of the ‘resist’ process and of the critical passage in Pliny (H. N. xxxv, 42) will be found in the third volume of Mr. Kendrick's catalogue, pp. 60 sqq.

page 78 note 1 i.e. ѝ αίμαῬῬοûσα of St. Matthew ix, 20. The corruption of spelling may be compared with our emerods = haemorrhoids.

page 78 note 2 for is not uncommon in Coptic, especially as representing semi-consonantaly: , .

page 78 note 3 Proctor, R., Index to EarlyPrinted Books …, London, 1898, no. 5180Google Scholar; Reichling, D., Appendices ad Hainii-Copingeri Repertorium Bibliographicum, Fasc. iii, Munich, 1907, no, 843. There are copies of the book in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the BibliothecaCasanatensis at Rome, and the Library of the University of PennsylvaniaGoogle Scholar.

page 79 note 1 i. e. εìѕ.

page 79 note 2 The second I of XPICIOY (εìѕχρνσíον) is tall and out of shape at the top, so that the word appeared to be χριστοû. It is due to the acumen of Professor Strzygowski on a recent visit to England that the quotation was identified.

page 79 note 3 Errera, I., Collection d'anciennes étoffes égyptiennes, Brussels, 1916.Google Scholar Other textiles with lettering at Brussels are nos. 234, 349, 422. The first and third seem to be ‘conventionalized’ (see nos. 13 sqq. below); the second cannot be read in Madame Errera's reproduction.

page 79 note 4 i. e. (an expression midway between the Northern and Southern dialects) ‘the good God’.