The earliest known Oriental rug was discovered in 1949 in a Scythian burial site at Pazyryk in the Altai region, about fifty miles from the Outer Mongolian border. The Scythians, a nomad tribe of Iranian origin, were influenced by both the Graeco-Roman and the Chinese civilizations.

The Pazyryk carpet, with a quatrefoil field design framed by a border of five stripes, of which the fourth and second assume rather more importance than the others, suggests a comparatively longer development that may well have began elsewhere. The palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh had pavements decorated in a similar manner, the central field with an all-over pattern of interesting circles being surrounded by a border of four stripes, with lotus flowers in the second and the fourth and small rosettes in the others. The quatrefoil pattern also appeared in the palace of Nineveh.

The burial sites in the Altai region are thought to date from about 500 B.C. These  first Oriental rugs were undoubtedly made in various important cultural centres of Hither Asia at that time, chiefly in Sardins, the Lydian capital and after 546 B.C. one of the seats of the Persian Administration, and Babylon, which was conquered by Cyrus in 538 B.C.

The Oriental rugs thus did not suddenly appear from nowhere, nor was it developed in imitation of animal skins. It is more likely that it evolved as mobile substitute for mosaic. Excavations at Olynthus (Macedonia) have brought to light colored mosaics with mythological scenes and animals of every kind (fifth to fourth centuries B.C.). Why, then, should not a nomad prince have longed for similar decoration for his tent?

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It makes difference whether mosaics merely inspired the designs of carpets or whether carpets were altogether adaptations of mosaic. Even the discoveries at Pazyryk do not answer the question of first origins. But they do prove that the art of the knotted Oriental rugs was already highly evolved in pre-Christian times.

 

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