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Some Ancient Silk from the Crimea in the British Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Hero Granger Taylor  and
John Peter Wild
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Summary

A textile fragment from the Crimea acquired by the British Museum in 1848 is identified as a Han Chinese monochrome figured silk. Pieces of the same cloth are also in the Hermitage, Leningrad. The context of the find and the associated grave furniture are re-examined and a production date for the silk within the first century B.C. or early first century A.D. is proposed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , September 1981 , pp. 302 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1981

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References

NOTES

1 We are grateful to Mr. D. M. Bailey of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities for permission to study and publish this material, and to Miss Penelope Thexton for translating the relevant Russian sources. Without her help this note could not have been written.

2 Riboud, K. in Gervers, V. (ed.), Studies in Textile History (1977), pp. 254 fGoogle Scholar .

3 Annotated catalogues of S. Leigh Sotheby & Co., London, now in the British Library.

4 Foreign Office Lists, 1852 and 1855Google Scholar .

5 Vaulina, M., Wasowicz, A., Bois grecs et romains de l'Ermitage (1974), pp. 19 f., 57Google Scholar .

6 MacPherson, D., Antiquities of Kertch (1857), pp. 40 ff., 48 ffGoogle Scholar .

7 Gille, F. (ed.), Antiquités du Bosphore Cimmérien conservées au Musée Impériale de l'Érmitage, St.-Pétersbourg 1 (1854), p. 3Google Scholar .

8 Ibid.; Reinach, S., Kondakov, N., Tolstoy, J., Antiquités de la Russie Méridionale (1891), p. 109Google Scholar .

9 Comptes Rendus de la Commission Impériale Archéologique de St.-Pétersbourg (1878-1879), 134 f.Google Scholar ; Atlas 1877-81 pour les années 1878 et 1879 (1881), pl. v, no. 3Google Scholar .

10 Lubo-Lesnichenko, E. I., Drevniye Kitaiskiye shelkoviye tkani ivyshivki V v. do n.e. —Ill v. N.E. v. sobranii Gosudarstvennovo Ermitazha, Catalogue L (1961), p. 29, no. 6, pl. ixGoogle Scholar ; Gertsiger, D. S., ‘Antichniye tkani v sobranii Ermitazha’ in Gorbunova, K. S., Pamyatniki Antichnovo Prikladnovo Iskusstva (Hermitage, Leningrad, 1973), p. 95, no. 28Google Scholar . It was confirmed as silk by Nunome, J., Yosan no kigen to kodaiginu (Origin of Sericulture and the Ancient Silks) (Tokyo, 1979), pp. 285–6Google Scholar .

11 Kareisha, D. V. in Zapiski Odesskavo Obshchestva Istorii i Drevnostei, i (1844), p. 617Google Scholar ; Rostovtzeff, M. I., Antichnaya Decorativnaya Zhivopis na Yuge Rossii (1914), p. 48, n. 1Google Scholar ; cf. idem, Skythien und der Bosporus, i (1931), pp. 165, 207 fGoogle Scholar .

12 Kareisha, , loc. cit.Google Scholar

13 Op. cit. in n. 7, lxxi ff., pl. LXXXIGoogle Scholar .

14 Riboud, , op. cit., p. 275, n. 21Google Scholar ; Gertsiger, , op. cit., p. 95, no. 28Google Scholar .

15 Setninarium Kondakovianunt, i (1927), pp. 85 ffGoogle Scholar .

16 Rostovtzeff, M. I., Skythien und der Bosporus, i (1931), p. 208Google Scholar .

17 Watzinger, C., ‘Griechische Holzsarkophage aus der Zeit Alexanders des Grossen’, Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, vi (1905), 47, Abb. 86 (cf. 58, no. 44)Google Scholar ; Rostovtzeff, Antichnaya, p. 48, n. IGoogle Scholar .

18 Watzinger, , op. cit., 85Google Scholar .

19 op. cit. in n. 7, pl. LXXXIGoogle Scholar ; Jahrbuch des Kaiserlichen Deutschen Archäologischen Institutes, xvii (1902), 127, Abb. 2, 139Google Scholar ; Vaulina, , Wqsowicz, , op. cit. in n. 5, p. 162Google Scholar .

20 BM 48.8-4.25 (now 45 cm. long): Liversidge, J. E. A., Furniture in Roman Britain (1953), pp. 46 f., pls. 59-60Google Scholar ; Richter, G. M. A., The Furniture of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans (1966), fig. 373Google Scholar . The leg was bought in ‘Catlin's Sale’ and might indeed be the third leg of the table, pace Vaulina and Wasowicz.

21 Liversidge, , loc. cit.Google Scholar

22 Richter, , op. cit., pp. 71 ff.Google Scholar , 111 f.; Liversidge, , loc. cit.Google Scholar

23 Vaulina, M., Wqsowicz, A, op. cit. in n. 5, p. 162Google Scholar .

24 Ibid., p. 168.

25 Gajdukevic, V. F., Das Bosporanische Reich (1971), p. 414Google Scholar .

26 Raschke, M. G., ‘New studies in Roman commerce with the East’ in Temporini, H. (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, ii, 9, 2 (1978), pp. 606 ff., 610, 690, n. 61Google Scholar .

27 Ibid., p. 709, n. 185.

28 Jahrbuch des römisch-germanischen Zentralmuseums, xvi (1969), 59 ffGoogle Scholar . The Hochdorf silk is unpublished.

29 Wild, J. P., Textile Manufacture in the Northern Roman Provinces (1970), pp. 12 ff.Google Scholar ; cf. Jahrbuch des römisch-germanischen Zentralmuseums, xvi (1969), 65 ff.Google Scholar ,