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Can anyone help me to interpret the inscriptions in this picture?
Erik Persson
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Can anyone help me to interpret the inscriptions in this picture?
Erik Persson
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Is there really no one here who can read the inscriptions?
Erik Persson -
This silk carpet will not be the kind of tribal weaving that is the main focus of Turkotek, but I will take a chance and try to get some input anyway.
After much pondering, I finally purchased this item from an Ebay seller in Germany some time ago. The carpet was first advertised as "SEIDEN Teppichbrücke Persien Isfahan um 1970", but was then removed from Ebay for a time and re-appeared as "Seiden Keshan Ägypten um 1950" (or 1920-49). I asked the seller about the changed advertisement, but he just answered me that he had asked for advice about the piece ("ich habe mich beraten lassen"). To me the first classification appears likely enough, whereas the second and final one is a bit astonishing. I have not been able to find much about Egyptian Keshans on the Internet, but what I have found has been somewhat disappointing. These seem to be rather "run of the mill" carpets with typical Keshan patterns and nothing of this design quality, originality and appeal. It is difficult to find much written about modern Egyptian carpets and Egyptian Keshans, but I came across the little book Egyptian Carpets: A Practical Guide by Luanne Brown and Sidna Rachid, where it was mentioned that indeed some high quality silk carpets have been made in Egypt in recent times. Does anyone know some other relevant articles and books on this topic?
The inscriptions are also puzzling. I asked the seller and he told me: "Ich habe von einen Persa erfahren: ( 19 KASHANI ) und unten ist auf Arabisch, das konnte er nicht sagen, wahrscheinlich Signatur." Apparently, no one here on Turkotek has been able to decipher them, neither on the reddit r/translator forum have I received any input so far, although my question has received almost 300 views:
https://www.reddit.com/r/translator/...what_do_these/
A Kurdish acquaintance was not able to make sense of them either. I have also experimented with Google Translate, but whereas it does recognize the inscriptions as text, the translations and transcriptions change all the time and make no or very little sense to me. Some very tentative results are that the apparently Kufic inscription in the cartouche appears to start with the letters "Ma", which appears reasonable as one would expect it to say something like "Mary/Maryam and the child Jesus". The number 19 mentioned by the "Persa" turns up every now and then on the second line and on the third line a word translated as "century" comes up rather frequently. My guess is that the inscriptions are either decorative elements and not meant to mean anything or that the weaver has distorted them into illegibility when translating the design to the actual rug.
The figures on the carpet are also puzzling. Whereas the appearance of Jesus and Mary as the centrepiece is easy to understand, it is a bit strange that they are depicted on a kind of jar with a lot of other elements. The figures on the border are especially puzzling: In the corners, there are a hunter with a dog, a winged figure on a platform, a winged bull and two winged figures with sticks and in the middle on each of the sides what appears to be a somewhat Zoroastrian-like winged figure with a stick. The winged figures appear to be angels. But what do all these figures mean? Are they just decorations or do they represent something? Does the carpet has some kind of religious or other meaning or function or is it just meant to be appealing to a tourist or other potential buyer who looks for something nice to hang on the wall?
To sum up, the questions I need help with are:
1) What are the origins and age of the carpet?
2) Is my guess that the inscriptions are decorative (or very distorted) and do not have any meaning likely to be correct?
3) What is the meaning of the various elements in the carpet? What is the purpose of the carpet?
Any input will be appreciated!Attached FilesComment
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Hi Erik
I can't read Arabic script except for numerals, and although there may be some in there I don't anything that looks like a date. The fact that nobody in your Reddit group can read it suggests that it's gibberish. The iconography is interesting, but not familiar to me and doesn't suggest any coherent story I'm familiar with. The dealer sounds knowledgeable and honest - I can't think of any other reason he would change the description from Isfahan (expensive and prestigious) to Egyptian (inexpensive and pedestrian).
My best guess is that it's of recent production (1975-present) and that the calligraphic and pictorial elements are decorative.
Steve PriceComment
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Thank you for your input, Steve! I agree that the seller is an honest person, but he is obviously not sure about the origins of this rather untypical silk rug. I also think that the rug is of rather recent production, as there are no signs of age on it and its design seems a bit "eclectic" in style, which, I believe, can hardly be older than the 1970s. That said, the rather idiosyncratic and quite complicated design seems to me to be distinctively Persian, although it is hard to know where it was actually produced, if you are not in the know - it may well have been in Egypt or anywhere, if not in Isfahan, Qom or Keshan.Comment
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Hi
I'm don't think this is necessarily gibberish. But my ability to read Farsi or Arabic script is extremely limited, because it is often a handwritten scrawl (as is most of this), or has a decorative flourish that makes it hard to pick out individual characters. To my eye the upper large lozenge reads something like: Marfatna Al-Galaqatna. But I don't speak Farsi and have no idea what that would mean. The left-most word in the lower large lozenge almost looks like it reads: Esfahan.
Try finding a local rug dealer from that region who may be able to read them successfully.
Regards
ChuckComment
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Thank you, Chuck, Google Translate seems to support your readings: When Persian is selected as language, the first word in the upper cartouche rather consistently shows up as "Marfatna", whereas the second part is a bit more changeable, but not very far from your reading. In the lower lozenge "Talal Isfan" turns up rather frequently, when "Arabian" is the selected language. On the other hand, no one has been able to tell me what all this means. A few days ago, I also asked a rug dealer from Iran who has sold me a few rugs about this in a mail, but whereas he sent me some tentative thoughts about the origins of the rug, he did not reply to my request for a translation of the inscriptions on the rug. I don't know if this was because he could not read or interpret them or he did not have time to spend time on this task.
In the Beluch below which I bought last year from this selfsame seller, he then told me that the inscriptions are gibberish, as the Beluch nomads usually are analfabets. The inscriptions in the silk rug clearly looks more like the real thing.
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