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Banquet Mural, Piandjikent
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
A larger image of this Banquet Painting, Sector XVI, Room 10. Sogdian Piandjikent (Penjikent).
Banquet Painting, Sector XVI, Room 10. Amazon Hall, Mural, Sogdian Piandjikent.
FEASTING
Painting with glue paints on dry loess plaster
First half of the 8th century
Penjikent. Sector XVI, room 10
Accession: from excavations in 1960
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
The festive scene depicted in this fragment is somewhat different from the one on the opposite wall of the hall. The feasters are sitting on a patterned carpet, the background of the painting is red. The characters are dressed in caftans made of expensive, richly ornamented silk fabrics. A dagger in a scabbard, two cases and a scarf tied in a knot are suspended from the banded belt of the feasters. One detail is interesting - the handles of the daggers are made so that they imitate the pimpled skin of a stingray (or shagreen?), which was used to prevent the hand from slipping. A fan is in the hands of two participants in the feast. Each holds in his hands a cup or mug, apparently gold. Open bowls, on a high base, decorated with flutes. A mug with a ring-shaped handle in the hands of one of the characters is decorated with a drawing of a male figure standing in full height and leaning on a long staff with a handle bent down. Due to the rich clothes and unusual travel kit, there is an opinion that merchants feasting are depicted here.
Photos by Oleg Belaychuk
The belt knives are referenced as figure 435 in The military technology of classical Islam by D Nicolle
435. Fresco from Piandjikent Room XVI/10, 7th-8th centuries AD, Transoxanian, Hermitage, Leningrad (Aka S, Yaku).
