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WonderAncient textile fact

The Pazyryk carpet, made some 2,300 to 2,500 years ago and preserved in a frozen tomb in Siberia's Altai Mountains, is the oldest known carpet with a knotted pile, the soft surface of a rug.

Altai Mountains, 5th–3rd century BC

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The story behind the card

The Soviet archaeologist Sergei Rudenko found it in 1949 in barrow 5 at Pazyryk, a burial mound of the horse-riding nomads of the Altai. Robbers had broken into the tomb in ancient times; water seeped in through their tunnel and froze, and the ice kept felt, wood, textiles and the carpet intact. Rudenko dated the burials to the fifth century BC; later work places this group of barrows in the fourth to third centuries BC. The carpet is about two metres square and holds around 1.25 million knots, with borders of horsemen and deer around a central field. Scholars still argue over where it was woven, with Persia, Armenia and Central Asia all proposed. It is kept at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

Türkçe oku
Pazırık halısı, bugün bilinen en eski düğümlü halıdır. Yaklaşık 2.300 ila 2.500 yıl önce dokunmuş ve Sibirya'daki Altay Dağları'nda donmuş bir mezarda günümüze ulaşmıştır.
Altay Dağları, MÖ 5.-3. yüzyıl

Sovyet arkeolog Sergei Rudenko halıyı 1949'da, Altay'ın atlı göçebelerine ait bir mezar höyüğü olan Pazırık 5 numaralı kurganda buldu. Mezar çok eski zamanlarda soyulmuştu; soyguncuların açtığı tünelden sızan su donmuş, buz da keçeyi, ahşabı, kumaşları ve halıyı bozulmadan saklamıştı. Rudenko mezarları MÖ 5. yüzyıla tarihlemişti; sonraki çalışmalar bu kurgan grubunu MÖ 4. ile 3. yüzyıllara yerleştiriyor. Yaklaşık iki metreye iki metre boyutundaki halıda 1,25 milyon kadar düğüm var; ortadaki alanı atlılar ve geyiklerle süslü kenar şeritleri çevreler. Halının nerede dokunduğu hâlâ tartışılıyor: İran, Ermenistan ve Orta Asya'nın adı geçiyor. Halı bugün St. Petersburg'daki Devlet Ermitaj Müzesi'nde saklanıyor.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Pazyryk carpet
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