El Bagawat (Egypt)

El Bagawat, Early Christian cemetery, Kharqa Oasis, Egypt. El Bagawat, Early Christian cemetery, Kharqa Oasis, Egypt.

El Bagawat lies about three km from El Kharg, the capital of the Kharqa oasis, in the Western desert of Egypt. Close to the settlement lies an early Christian cemetery. The cemetery consists of numerous domed, mud-brick mausoleums and underground galleries dating to the fourth century AD and later. These were built over an earlier Egyptian necropolis of pit graves.

The Christian cemetery appears to have been in constant use until the eleventh century. Teams from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1907-1932), recovered various textiles from the cemetery. According to the former head of textile conservation at the museum, Nobuko Kajitani (2006:108), an embroidered piece was found, but no further details appear to have been published.

Sources:

  • KAJITANI, Nobuko (2006). 'Textiles and their context in the third-to-fourth-century CE cemetery of al-Bagawat, Khargah Oasis, Egypt from the 1907-1931 excavations by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,' in: Sabine Schrenk (ed.), Textiles in Situ: Their Find Spots in Egypt and Neighbouring Countries in the First Millennium CE, Riggisburg: Abegg Stiftung: 9 Riggisberger Berichte, pp. 95-112.
  • VOGELSANG-EASTWOOD, Gillian (2016). 'Late classical and early medieval embroideries from Egypt and Nubia,' in: Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood (ed.). Encyclopedia of Embroidery from the Arab World, London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 58-70, esp. p. 65.

Digital source of illustration (retrieved 3 June 2016).

GVE

Last modified on Tuesday, 18 April 2017 13:09