The Story of Joseph on a Coptic Tapestry

Abstract

Among the Coptic antiquities exhibited in the British Museum is a panel of woollen tapestry which, judging from similar panels on some of the better preserved Coptic garments, once adorned the sleeve of a linen tunic 1 (Pl. 36a). Its brightly coloured decoration consists of conventionalized floral scrolls and those strangely distorted birds and rather awkward, childlike figures which are a characteristic of Coptic seventh and eighth century style. At first sight it seems difficult to discover the meaning of these figures. But the central medallion with a human body lying horizontally, surmounted by two human faces and a group of little triangular objects, indicates that our panel belongs to the well-known series of textiles with scenes from the life of Joseph which Strzygowski 2 was the first to point out and of which other specimens have since been published by O. v. Falke,s A. F. Kendrick,' Wulff-Volbach,5 and A. Apostolaki." All these textiles served as decoration for linen tunics, but they are all of circular, not, like ours, of rectangular shape, and were worn not on the sleeve but on the front and the back of the garment. They show a frieze ofJoseph scenes arranged in a circle, and in the centre they have the same medallion which we find on our panel (P1. 36b). From the context in which it appears on these circular discs, the figure lying in the centre may be identified as Joseph asleep, while the two faces and the triangles above him represent the sun, the moon and the stars which he sees worshipping him in his dream.