The unusual pattern of this carpet has been termed by the famous collector 'Flaming Animal Spirits'.
The design elements can be distinguished in a repeated V-form from which vertically tree-like forms spring; along the vertical axis two more drawings complete the design- one stems from the very interior of the V, and the other punctuates the field between the Vs in the shape of an urn/vessel/ lamp at whose flanks two bird-like figures take flight.
A classical 'Karapinar' floral meander in the 'ribbon style' frames the scene
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| 'Karapinar' carpet, Central Anatolia, 17th/18th, ex Alexander collection, Sotheby's photocredits |
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| Detail, Sotheby's photo credits |
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| 'Karapinar' medallion carpet, the 'ribbon' style, 16th II half, Zaleski Collection |
Only another carpet in the TIEM sports a similar motive. Found in the Keykubad Alaeddin mosque in Konya, it applies the pattern in a specular way from the mid-field where a diamond medallion creates the turning point. The Museum catalogue talks "of a prayer rug, with three double-sided, intertwined mihrab lines" and appended lamps.
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| Karapinar carpet, Central Anatolia, 17th-18th, TIEM |
A correspondence with Safavid 'vase' carpets' iconography has been proposed because of the serrated/sickle leaf element and the vase, and also with some Turkmen weavings (Sotheby's catalogue, 2017).
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| The Béhague Sickle Leaf carpet, Kirman, 17th |
As to Turkmen weavings, echoes sound in the tree of life Yomud ashmalyk and in the rare Tekke Bird or Animal ashmalyk.
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| Yomud Tree of Life ashmalyk, 19th, Central Asia |
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| Tekke Bird ashmalyk, 18th, Central Asia |
To our survey, the only parallel to this 'plumy' feather-like design is in a rarest Anatolian border as seen in the ex-Aita 'Lotto' carpet border. Feathered leaves compose the pattern, in a V type, whose source is still to be found (see Serenissime Trame, p. 129, 2016).
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| Ex Aita 'Lotto' carpet, Anatolia, II half 16th, Zaleski collection |
But, after all, the Alexander item presents a unique aura, quite far from Safavid and Ottoman workshop types. A story may linger herein and awaits to be told.
Overcoming the often cold rules of cataloguing and the difficulties of identifying designs in carpets, random imagination intrudes.
The unfamiliar V element can, in fact, be compared with a totally different and distant artefact: a mask found in a Pazyryk barrow, Altai mountains, exhibiting an extraordinary fancy antler attached to a horse mask.
The Iron Age Pazyryk Scythian culture shows typical ritual arrangements in the burial chambers. Horses accompany the dead, mummified and decorated with masks and various pieces of tack. Masks and tacks usually depict animals quintessential to this culture, among these are birds, mountain goats, deers, horses, griffins. Masks embody the aggregate nature of mythical beasts. One specifically bears on the head-top imposing antlers: indeed a suggestive parallel to the carpet's V shape.
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| Horse mask with composite headgear (wings and caprid), Pazyryk boundary, 5th, The Hermitage |
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| Pazyryk Culture, felt, leather, fur and gold, carved with appliqué work, barrow 1, Pazyryk boundary, 5th, The Hermitage |
Imagination played a great role in myths and symbols focusing on unique elements. Here the case at point is the deer/stag and his antlers. Creating images beyond reality, rather, creating other 'realities' (Clive Gamble, Thinking Big: How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human Mind, University of Southampton ) seems to be one primal activity of the human brain since prehistoric times.
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| Red stag with antler |
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| Hoofed composite animal (deer-horse-griffin-bird), Xiongnu art?, 206BC-220AD, Shaanxi History Museum |
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| Stag from Pazyryk, The Hermitage |
Deer masks have existed since the Mesolithic period. They were carefully modelled as headdresses or frontlets after deer skulls and antlers with holes for the eye. The archaeological site of Star Carr in Great Britain has preserved some 24 exemplars. It is not yet known whether they suited ancient shamanic type practises or incarnated symbolic beliefs, whether played as hunting stratagem or rich symbolic pageantry.
Historically, the deer was among the primal subsistence animals for the hunters and gatherers of the Stone Age providing them with food, skin, bones and sinews.
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| Red Deer headgear, Star Carr Yorkshire, Great Britain 8000BC, The British Museum |
Esther Jacobson devoted much of her research to the image of the deer among the Altaic and Siberian populations. She postulated the animal to embody the mother goddess in a primaeval pantheon. Constant shifting of nature, history and cultural settings caused this image to change meaning and visual representation.
The Early Nomads of Eurasian steppes contributed to such 'ecology of beliefs' (E. Jacobson) testifying various guises for the deer when it disappeared from visual artefacts at the turning of the new millennium - the Scythians of the Altaic Pazyryk culture were probably the most creative. The steppe Animal Style is the proper language of this various imagery.
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| Couched gold deer, Scythian culture, 5thBC I half, Ak-Mechet Bay, Crimea, The Hermitage |
The Pazyryk deer is often 'disguised' as a composite fantastic animal with the body of a horse, a griffinated snout, the tail of a lion and birds or florets sprouting from the antler branches; represented everywhere, on human tattoos as well. Intermingled cultural influences contributed to the animalistic repertoire of the Scythians, themselves Indo-European people living at the extreme borders of the Persian empire, among such influences were the Siberian and that of the Eastern nomadic galaxy.
The extremely varied Scythian culture also melted with shamanic practises more or less prominent in any ancient population, in Indo-Iranian alike (S. Yatsenko, Shamans of Ancient Iranian Nomads 2017).
The Mask was a unique invention among the Altaic and Siberian populations intimately derived from a shamanic ideology. It connected with the world of the spirits, it could become the spirit himself and possessed magical supernatural forces warding off demons and granting favours. An embodiment of and/or substitute for spirit/god, the use of masks was in great favour also in popularised festivities and rituals up till modern times.
Animals with a paramount significance were mostly used, at times alone or in an aggregate type reflecting the collective nature of the shamanic spirits (Guo Shuyun, Functions and features of the Shamanic Masks, transl. E. Simoncini 2003).
However, what do Anatolia and Anatolian weavers have to do with all this?
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| Eurasian steppes |
Anatolia offers a long history of deer presence since its earliest recorded cultures. Deer hunting has been recorded since 6000 BC in the wall painting of Catal Huyuk and since 11.000 BC in Gobekli Tepe in the numerous rests of wild animals' bones. Hunters and gatherers all over Eurasia shared similar belief systems and practices.
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| Deer and Hunters, Gobekli Tepe 6000BC, Ankara Museum of |
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| Deer finial, Alaca Hoyuk, Hittite, Museum of Anatolian Civilisations Ankara |
or in the personification of the Stag God, a god mounting a stag. From a primal deity, it later downgraded into the multiplied pantheon of earthly tutelary deities as recorded in the Neo-Assyrian period of the Hittite kingdom. In the 13th century BC it enjoyed a particular favour being included in the sacred 'trinity' of the Hittites - the Storm God, the Sun Goddess and the Stag God. Related to the primeval sacred hunt it shifted to indicate wild nature and animals and a Tutelary God of the Land. The stag or his antler alone was also used to indicate royal power as control of the wild natural forces and thence of kingly power. Antlers alone can be found to signify the deity in visual narrative on rock reliefs or in the epigraphs added below.
When did the deer become a stag? The male probably replaced the once female deer - when cultures and societies changed from a matriarchal to a patriarchal order replacing the ancient cult of the feminine creative principle with the masculine "institutionalised violence" some 6000 years ago (as to Gimbutas, whose theories are though questioned). However, historians could not clarify the terminology. Obviously, the antler of the male was a very immediate image.
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| Isolated deer antler, Hittite relief, from B. J. Collins, Animal Mastery in Hittite Texts and Iconography 2010 |
Texts from the neo-Hittite period (1180-800BC) testify the Stag God to be celebrated seasonally in various empire provinces with proper rituals and festivals (kilans). It appeared in cult dramas and ritual combats played by men disguised as wild animals. Such shows presumably referred to hunting magic and its symbolic meaning as relics of a distant past.
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| Deer hunt |
Stag standards are mentioned in processional rites during the tutelary deities' festivals.
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| Bronze sun disk/standard with deer and bulls, Hattian, Alacahöyük 2500-2250 BCE Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara |
The complex ritual prescribed offerings to the deity to obtain favours, aside from showing symbols of hunt, royalty and deference. Libations were also poured with ritual vessels, while rython in the form of the animal god was presented to the god for his own use. The splendid Schimmel exemplar gives voice to the written texts.
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| The Schimmel Deer Rython, Hittite 14th-13th BC, The Metropolitan Museum |
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| Drawing by C. Koken from R.M. Boehmer, "Reliefkeramik von Bogazkoy," as modified by H. Guterbock in Anadolu 22 |
Interestingly, in this early period, characteristic features became meaningful abstract signs substitute for the whole image - antlers of supernatural protection; vases of libations to obtain divine favour; standards of ceremony and totemic value.
The continuity of the deer imagery in Central Anatolia after the fall of the Hittites during the Phrygian and Lydian kingdoms is verified by various artefacts, the parallel slow transformation into an amuletic image entering folk traditions as well. The arrival of the monotheistic religions in Anatolia - Christianity and later Islam - would have erased such vestiges of heretical beliefs but preserved them in the popular traditions and lore.
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| Pitcher with hunt scene, Phrygian-Lydian kingdoms, central Anatolia 800-600BC, Museum of Fine Arts Boston |
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| Stag amultet, late Phrygian-Lydian bronze, 800-600BC Museum of Fine Arts Boston |
Interestingly enough, R. Ettinghausen, addressing the theme of the dance with zoomorphic masks in some paintings from the 17th century Safavid and Ottoman area, stressed the pictorial and literary evidence and continuity of spectacles/dances enacted by persons disguised as animals in the Islamic world from the Umayyad period into the 13th century, and, before, in Parthian artefacts too. He did not hesitate to link them to 'earlier stages of historical developments when such dances had a religious significance'. Their appearance on luxury goods (bronze, metalwork, lustre and polychrome pottery) verifies the appeal such popular forms of entertainment had on the wealthy and court patronage. The presence of a large stag in the form of a hobby horse is mentioned in the ceremonies for a royal circumcision in Edirne in the early 17th century, a ritual of fertility (R. Ettinghausen, The Dance with Zoomorphic Masks and Other Forms of Entertainment seen in Islamic Art 1965).
Professor Metin And, a pioneer researcher on Turkish traditional theatre, provides further information. He published several studies tracing the Central Asian shamanistic, ancient Greek, Anatolian, and Turkish elements in the folk dances of present-day Turkey (T. S. Halman, The Evolution of Turkish Drama in Rapture and Revolution 2007).
The stag is the main character of the Stag Play, a dance performed all over Anatolia in rural contexts and, like many of these shows, conveys the central incident of Death and Resurrection (excruciatingly, the author does not add any detail on the performance nor mask details differently from what he does for other plays). The performer may be completely outfitted as the animal or wear only a mask.
Missing pertinent visual documents, shamanic masks of deer from other parts of Eurasia can help the imagination.
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| Shaman masked in deer (debated reconstruction), Les Trois Fréres Caves, France, 16.000BC |
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| Deer mask dance, Ulaan Bataar, before 1937 |
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| Siberian Evenk shaman 18th II half, Gottingen Museum Georg August University. In this case, the shaman wears only the antler of the deer on the front of the dress. |
Metin And informs us, quite interestingly, that the Stag Play was much in use in Istanbul in the 17th and 18th centuries confirming an occasional exchange of themes between the official urban theatre and the popular folk one which, otherwise, are distinct.
Consequently, there does exist some evidence of the presence in the Ottoman and Anatolian context of the deer mask and its spectacular antler.
The presence of two carpets dated to this very period with a design much-resembling a deer antler does not seem casual. On the contrary, it belongs to a long-rooted tradition and the resurgence of that particular theme in that period.
Some last remarks
The tree-like forms stemming from the antlers.
Although they should depict the secondary off shots of it, like hinted in the bottom line where they quite well imitate the large palmate secondary branches, in the other lines they suggest straight tree forms rather.
Anyhow, be it a weaving feature or a subtle suggestion, it communicates a second nature of the antler. Typical of the Siberian-Altaic belief deer antlers and mountain goat long curved horns reflect the image of the Tree of Life, the World Tree and/or World Axis. Siberian shamanism and Scythian traditions during the Iron Age Pazyryk culture created composite symbolic imagery that virtually decanted in successive generations of nomads.
Bird
Anyhow, be it a weaving feature or a subtle suggestion, it communicates a second nature of the antler. Typical of the Siberian-Altaic belief deer antlers and mountain goat long curved horns reflect the image of the Tree of Life, the World Tree and/or World Axis. Siberian shamanism and Scythian traditions during the Iron Age Pazyryk culture created composite symbolic imagery that virtually decanted in successive generations of nomads.
Bird
Plausible birds depicted in light-blue and white forms, also bear a composite meaning. Soul of the dead in Islamic faith, the bird is either the steppe Great Eagle perching on the World Axis, either the future shaman's soul raised in nests on his branches, or the metaphor of the Spirit Realm, just to mention some roles played by this animal.
Vase
Vase
Be the design of the carpet connected to the Death and Resurrection theme, as if inspired by the contemporary Stag Play, the urns/lamps/vases should perform the duty of libations to the principle of rebirth and/or symbolise the light of the final destination.
Vertical central motif
Vertical central motif
Logically suggesting the World Axis for its collocation in the design economy, it may recall a standard to be displayed in ancient festivals (Peter Stone’s book, The Oriental Rug Lexicon gives the following definition of the Axis Mundi design: “A pervasive motif in oriental rugs, occurring in many variations, naturalistic, geometricized, and abstract. Generally, any primary design motif with a long vertical axis and horizontal or upward pointing limbs.”)
It may remind a composite headgear/mask as well.
Most significantly, it has been remarked that a theriomorphic religious idea was laid to rest at the foundation of Anatolian religion (Alberto R. W. Green). The Animal Style of the steppe found in these regions sheer consonances and Shamanism added pivotal collective bonds.
The only Anatolian carpet bearing similar contents is held in Istanbul.
It displays a ritual composition too - A Tree of Life/World Axis with perching birds flanked by fantastic animals with griffinated snouts, wings, antlers and multiple legs. The rectangular green element on their back might signify a saddle to be mounted.
Fantasy can ride.
------------------------
On the subsistence of shamanic practises in Anatolia throughout its long history there is no doubt, specifically of Central Asian shamanism. Shamanism was brought along by the Turks from their fatherland in inner Mongolia during their move westwards.
Probably, they came in contact with it during their living in the Rouran Khaganate, North of China, bordering what is today thought to be the cradle of Siberian-Altaic shamanism: Tungusic, Siberian and Samoyedic people practised it.
"As for true shamanism.....we do know from Altaic mythology and ethnography that it did emerge as an institution among the Turkic tribes in this region ( E. Jacobson, Shamans, Shamanism and Anthropomorphising Imagery, 2001)
Turk epic shows the Turks emerging in the Great History within the Rouran Khanate, creating a vast dominion from the Chinese limits to the Sassanian empire. They replaced the Scythian power (9thBC-2ndCE), looted their burials and partly appropriated customs and practises of the subjugated populations. The Turk empire vanished around the 8th century.
Aside from the significant influences received from the great empires of the day, the Sassanian, the Byzantine and the Chinese, they maintained important traditional features despite conversion to Islam starting from the 8th century (The History of Islam in Turkestan, in Frank Kressing "Shamans, Mullahs, and Dervishes –Islam and Mysticism in Turkestan).
The Turk Oghuz, forefathers of the Turkomans, the Azeri and the Turk of Anatolia and Balkans converted circa the 10th (Haas 1987). Some shamanic practices were embedded and accepted in Islam thanks to Sufism, a mystical ascetic branch of Islam.
"Sufism emerged as a religious lore almost concomitantly in several Arabian countries and in Iran. Its well-known inclusive attitudes (especially in its first stage of emergence until approximately the 12th century, and compared to the Muslim orthodoxy), as well as an attitude of flexibility and compromise towards local pre-islamic belief systems being popular among different peoples, enhanced its wide distribution in the countries of the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Caucasia and Middle Asia” (Demidov 1988).
Shamanistic features like healing practise magical flight, the technique of ecstasy, and mastery over fire and weather are recorded in a long literature composed by Byzantine envoys (6th century), Persian and Arabic geographers, Tang Chinese Annals and European travellers - Mahmud al Kashgari, Rashid al Din, W. of Rubruk and the envoys of Louis XI among them - throughout the Mongol, the Ilkhanid and the Timurid period in diverse regions of Central Asia. The Ghuz and the Turks are the most mentioned aside from the Mongols and other Turkic nomads of Central Asia.
One last mention may be dedicated to the stag imagery in the Iranic-Persian world. Cultural connections are in fact most probable in the ancient composite scenario. While the deer has not a prominent role in Iranian mythology (Avestan and Vedic texts), the deer/stag is mostly present from the Achaemenid period onwards, prominently in the Sassanian stag hunt, a royal activity par excellence.
Hailing to this period, we have carpet deer representations like the one in the Al Sabah collection.
While the authority of Boris Marshak favours a royal Stag Hunt depiction in this stag row, Spuhler devises some interpretation problems because the curled legs in a rest-like position do not combine with the right-up head and the stretched neck ribbon, indicating a moving row.
Really, couched animals are easily found in the animal steppe imagery. Specifically, curled legs deers are typical of Neolithic Mongolian steles and later Scythian art. Deer jumping is also a source - the flying ribbon attached to the neck can indeed indicate movement.
It may remind a composite headgear/mask as well.
Most significantly, it has been remarked that a theriomorphic religious idea was laid to rest at the foundation of Anatolian religion (Alberto R. W. Green). The Animal Style of the steppe found in these regions sheer consonances and Shamanism added pivotal collective bonds.
The only Anatolian carpet bearing similar contents is held in Istanbul.
It displays a ritual composition too - A Tree of Life/World Axis with perching birds flanked by fantastic animals with griffinated snouts, wings, antlers and multiple legs. The rectangular green element on their back might signify a saddle to be mounted.
Fantasy can ride.
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| Anatolian animal carpet, 15th (?) Vakiflar Museum Istanbul |
------------------------
On the subsistence of shamanic practises in Anatolia throughout its long history there is no doubt, specifically of Central Asian shamanism. Shamanism was brought along by the Turks from their fatherland in inner Mongolia during their move westwards.
Probably, they came in contact with it during their living in the Rouran Khaganate, North of China, bordering what is today thought to be the cradle of Siberian-Altaic shamanism: Tungusic, Siberian and Samoyedic people practised it.
"As for true shamanism.....we do know from Altaic mythology and ethnography that it did emerge as an institution among the Turkic tribes in this region ( E. Jacobson, Shamans, Shamanism and Anthropomorphising Imagery, 2001)
Aside from the significant influences received from the great empires of the day, the Sassanian, the Byzantine and the Chinese, they maintained important traditional features despite conversion to Islam starting from the 8th century (The History of Islam in Turkestan, in Frank Kressing "Shamans, Mullahs, and Dervishes –Islam and Mysticism in Turkestan).
The Turk Oghuz, forefathers of the Turkomans, the Azeri and the Turk of Anatolia and Balkans converted circa the 10th (Haas 1987). Some shamanic practices were embedded and accepted in Islam thanks to Sufism, a mystical ascetic branch of Islam.
"Sufism emerged as a religious lore almost concomitantly in several Arabian countries and in Iran. Its well-known inclusive attitudes (especially in its first stage of emergence until approximately the 12th century, and compared to the Muslim orthodoxy), as well as an attitude of flexibility and compromise towards local pre-islamic belief systems being popular among different peoples, enhanced its wide distribution in the countries of the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Caucasia and Middle Asia” (Demidov 1988).
Shamanistic features like healing practise magical flight, the technique of ecstasy, and mastery over fire and weather are recorded in a long literature composed by Byzantine envoys (6th century), Persian and Arabic geographers, Tang Chinese Annals and European travellers - Mahmud al Kashgari, Rashid al Din, W. of Rubruk and the envoys of Louis XI among them - throughout the Mongol, the Ilkhanid and the Timurid period in diverse regions of Central Asia. The Ghuz and the Turks are the most mentioned aside from the Mongols and other Turkic nomads of Central Asia.
One last mention may be dedicated to the stag imagery in the Iranic-Persian world. Cultural connections are in fact most probable in the ancient composite scenario. While the deer has not a prominent role in Iranian mythology (Avestan and Vedic texts), the deer/stag is mostly present from the Achaemenid period onwards, prominently in the Sassanian stag hunt, a royal activity par excellence.
 |
| Deer ornament, Axhemenid period, 500BC, Oxus treasure, British Museum |
Hailing to this period, we have carpet deer representations like the one in the Al Sabah collection.
 |
| Stags in a row, carpet, eastern Iran or East Turkestan, 5th-6th AD, Al Sabah collection |
While the authority of Boris Marshak favours a royal Stag Hunt depiction in this stag row, Spuhler devises some interpretation problems because the curled legs in a rest-like position do not combine with the right-up head and the stretched neck ribbon, indicating a moving row.
Really, couched animals are easily found in the animal steppe imagery. Specifically, curled legs deers are typical of Neolithic Mongolian steles and later Scythian art. Deer jumping is also a source - the flying ribbon attached to the neck can indeed indicate movement.
Moreover, a procession of stags frontally depicted could apply to ancient depictions and festivals, antler alone a tenable abstraction, repeated antler a pattern.
Bibliography
C. Alexander, A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art: The Color and Geometry of Very Early Turkish Carpets (Center for Environmental Structure, Vol 7) 1993
Sotheby's Catalogue
M. Beattie, Some Rugs of the Konya Region, 1976
P. Oakley, Facts or Fictions. "Karapinar" Rugs from Central Anatolia, Hali 166
J. Thompson, Milestones 2006
F.Fiorentino, Serenissime Trame, 2106
P. Stone, The Oriental Rug Lexicon 1996
Franses and Pinner, Turkoman Studies I, 1980
B.Durmilbez, Cams/Shamans, the Folk Healers Living in Anatolia: Ocak Folk Healers
J. A. Boyle, Turkish and Mongol Shamanism in the Middle Ages 1972
T. Zarcone, Shamanism and Islam. Sufism, Healing Rituals and Spirits in the Muslim World
F. Kressing, Shamans, Mullahs, and Dervishes –Islam and Mysticism in Turkestan
M. Berman, The Nature of Shamanism and the Shamanic Story, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2007
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| Inner Mongolia, Neolithic stele |
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| Gold cast Deer, late 7th, Komstroskaian kurgan, Northern Caucasus, Hermitage |
Bibliography
C. Alexander, A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art: The Color and Geometry of Very Early Turkish Carpets (Center for Environmental Structure, Vol 7) 1993
Sotheby's Catalogue
M. Beattie, Some Rugs of the Konya Region, 1976
P. Oakley, Facts or Fictions. "Karapinar" Rugs from Central Anatolia, Hali 166
J. Thompson, Milestones 2006
F.Fiorentino, Serenissime Trame, 2106
P. Stone, The Oriental Rug Lexicon 1996
Franses and Pinner, Turkoman Studies I, 1980
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