Length of brown wool string

Length of monochrome brown wool string.

Stein Textile Loan Collection. On loan from the Government of India and the Archaeological Survey of India. Copyright: Government of India.

Attached to fragment is a tag label showing Stein number possibly in Stein's handwriting or that of his assistant, Miss F M G Lorimer.

Niya includes a group of towns in the southern region of the Taklamakan Desert, at the foot of the Kunlun mountains. Once a military post under the Kingdom of Khotan, Niya became an important oasis along the southern Silk Road. Stein excavated several groups of dwellings there and found hundreds of wedge-shaped wooden tablets, some laced together in pairs with string and affixed with clay seals. The appearance of Pallas Athena, Eros and other Greek deities on some seals showed the impact of western classical art on Khotan. The tablets were inscribed with Kharoshthi, an ancient script of northwest India. Stein identified some as Buddhist prayers and others as administrative documents and he dated them to the period of the Kushan empire, which thrived in the first three centuries AD. Among ruins of dwellings and orchards, Stein found numerous textile fragments, Roman coins, wooden furniture with elaborate carving, pottery, Chinese basketry and lacquer, and documents in Chinese script which he dated to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD). The V&A holds, on loan, a large number of textiles from Niya, including leather, wool yarn, appliquéd and stitched wool felt, and braided animal hair.

This length of monochrome brown wool string was recovered from the site of Niya. The city dates from the 2nd to the 3rd century AD and was probably the capital of the kingdom of Shanshan, whose people were of Indian origin.

The site is part of an area of Central Asia we now call the Silk Road. This series of overland trade routes crossed Asia from China to Europe. The most notable item traded was silk, but the Silk Road was also important for the exchange of ideas. While silk textiles travelled west from China, Buddhism travelled east, entering China from India.

The explorer and archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943) brought this piece back from Central Asia. The V&A has around 700 ancient and medieval textiles recovered by Stein at the beginning of the 20th century. Some are silk while others are made from the wool of a variety of different animals.

LOAN:STEIN.158