Pillow cover with Arabic inscription
Description
[Egypt, al-Bahnasa] This rare complete Egyptian pillow cover is a masterpiece of contrasting colors. Crimson and blue-green wool alternate in the ground and bird-inhabited roundels, supported by mustard-colored wool and undyed linen woven in tapestry weave. When folded down the center, based on examples from Egyptian burials, four birds form a unit on each side and are appropriately ascending in flight. <br><br>Above, an Arabic text written in angular Kufic script reads, "In the name of God. Blessing from God to its owner. Of what was made in the tiraz." The word <em>tiraz</em> means factory or an Arabic-inscribed textile. This was probably made in al-Bahnasa, the city renowned for colorful wool textiles with figures, as they claimed, from a "gnat to the elephant."
Inscriptions (1)
Transcription
"In the name of God. Blessing from God to its owner. Of what was made in the tiraz."Cross-references (2)
- Wikidata Q60752193 tier-1
- CMA-id 135988 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Cleveland Museum of Art (Egyptian).
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.