Indexing and Cataloging Textiles From the Fag el Gamous Cemetery in Fayum, Egypt to Determine Their Relationship With Known Coptic Textiles

Abstract

Analysis of ancient textiles excavated in 1998 from the Fag el Gamous Cemetery in Egypt has led us to question the cultural origin of the textile designs. The purposes of our study were to establish a means to index and catalogue the textiles retrieved from Fag el Gamous and determine a possible relationship between these textiles (dated 200 B.C. to 800 A.D.) and textiles from known Coptic textile collections (500 A.D. to 1100 A.D.). We (1) acquired hardware and software for textile image and data collection, management, and retrieval; (2) created a searchable digital image database of the textiles; (3) indexed and catalogued the Fag el Gamous textiles; and (4) compared the Fag el Gamous textiles with known Coptic textile collections. Although the Fag el Gamous and Coptic textiles contained some similar structural elements, there were significant stylistic differences, and we concluded that the Fag el Gamous textiles were not Coptic in stylistic design. Thus, this unique collection of textiles may provide a significant bridge of textile artifacts between the Pharaonic (3000 B.C. to 330 B.C.) and Coptic (500 A.D. to 1100 A.D.) time periods.