Create an Amazon Business Account


Try Amazon Fresh



Illustration from a Coptic textile

Roundel with Mounted Warriors and a Lion Hunt, Egypt, 6th century.
Textile Museum, Washington.


Decorative roundel with two horsemen. Wool on linen.
Egyptian, 6th century. Textile Museum, Washington.
Plate 34, Early decorative textiles by Volbach, W. Fritz

pp.57 & 63:
    A whole series of textiles, showing two horsemen on a red ground riding away from or towards each other, ready for battle with sword and bow in hand, are probably modelled on Syrian originals such as the horsemen fabrics in Maastricht or London. In the roundel in Washington, the rider with the sword being crowned by two genii has been identified as Alexander. Here the 5th- or 6th-century artist was modelling his work on earlier sources like the Aachen pulpit or the bone reliefs in Baltimore and the Benaki Museum in Athens. In one fabric in the Cooper Union Museum in New York the rider is by himself. The closely related and well-preserved panel in Washington (plate 34) shows two horsemen fighting, as does another, very similar piece in the Cooper Union Museum (plate 33). A square purple panel with a rider design in London (plate 42) shows how in later years, certainly under Arab rule, this motif became so completely stylised as to be little more than an ornamental device.



See also Alexander the Great as a Coptic, Byzantine or Syrian Cavalryman on a Textile, Egypt or Syria, 7th century
More illustrations of costume and soldiers on Coptic textiles
Other 6th Century Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers
Egyptian Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers