Amazon Horse Archers on a Byzantine Textile, Egypt or Syria.


A larger image of the back of Amazon Horse Archers on a Byzantine Textile, Egypt or Syria. Metropolitan Museum of Art 1927.58.1.


Overview
Title: Medallion Depicting Addorsed Amazons on Horseback
Date: 7th–mid-8th century
Geography: Made in Syria
Medium: Silk; samite (weft-faced compound twill)
Dimensions: Textile: L. 8 3/4 in. (22.2 cm)
W. 7 7/8 in. (20 cm)
Mount: H. 12 3/4 in. (32.4 cm)
W. 11 1/2 in. (29.2 cm)
D. 1 1/4 in. (3.2 cm)
Classification: Textiles-Woven
Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1927
Object Number: 27.58.1
Curatorial Department: Islamic Art

Provenance
Adolph Loewi, Venice, until 1927; sold to MMA


Medallion Depicting Addorsed Amazons on Horseback
7th–mid-8th century

While the highest-quality silks produced in the Byzantine and Sasanian periods were intended for a relatively small elite, a broad range of simpler, two-color silks were consumed by those emulating the fashionable set. The design of this textile consists of a roundel, framed by a stylized vine-scroll border, enclosing an addorsed pair of amazons on horseback with drawn bows aimed at rampant felines underfoot. This silk was certainly of the type affordable to local elites, who used small amounts of the precious textile to adorn otherwise simple tunics.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accession Number: 1927.58.1



Mounted Amazons hunting leopards
Dated to the 6th century, Akhmim, Egypt
From the shroud of St Fridolin who was buried in his abbey in Säckingen in the late 6th century
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
BRADDOCK CLARKE - YAMANAKA KONDO 2022:239
By János Mestellér



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