This story is a family history of the Darvishi family who lived in ancient Persia. It is based upon historical records and suppositions made from these records and from other historical writings. The author is grateful to the writer of the book, “A Fanciful Look At Ancient Persia As It Might Have Been,” by a fictional writer who I will call Jophias Psuedofus. His book was written in Farsi and I am grateful for Professor Jasper Psuedofus, a cousin of Jophias, for translating the pertinent parts of his relative’s exhaustive book. The village and city names are not historical but are consistent with Persian locations at the time mentioned. The initial section of this story is told in the first person by one of the family members being written about, following an introductory paragraph to set the stage for our visit to the tenth century. The sections thereafter are narrated by this writer and pick up a family member at the end of the 1400s, followed by a visit to the early 1800s and ending with a present day ancestor.
The time is the tenth century; the place is what we now call Iran but at that time we might have called Persia. The boy is fourteen, the oldest of ten children born to Sematra and Cyrus Darvishi. The Darvishi family had long been in the making of carpets, and not only the Darvishi children, but their fifteen cousins and their cousin’s parents all work in the family’s several buildings with their window openings bringing in the hot sun’s rays, cooled by the mud brick walls, the hard dirt floors covered with muted colored rugs. The carpet designs have been passed down for generations, drawn in dyed colors by unknown ancestors, although new designs were being tested, having been devised by the boy’s aunt who is called Sapporah. She is a Darvishi, like he is. The family lives in the village of Tehit which is located near Jinji and the foothills of a rocky mountain range and also near the desert below.
“I am the boy of this story. I am short and slim, as are most of my siblings and cousins as well, with the exception of two cousins on my mother’s side who are considered to be plump in that both girls have chests and hips that stick out even in their robes. They perhaps eat too many dates and figs and too much flatbread with chickpea paste. All of my six brothers and three sisters are dark in coloring with dark hair and brown eyes again with an exception, this time being my youngest sister, Myra, who has blue eyes, almost unseen among desert people. Perhaps she was cursed by a spell or an ancestor married a devil. It is possible, for everyone knows those things are real. We must not question the underworld for fear of the consequences. I have studied such things from reading the writings of Zeoroaster, an ancient prophet who asked us to be kind to each other. I like that thought and wish others in our kingdom, which reportedly was made vast by conquest, held to this ideal, although I know we are guided by the Prophet Muhammad and the early religions are not to be trusted.
I have several important jobs. On most days I stand at the loom, making sure the weaver, whichever of us it is, is consistent in their job of passing each weft through the proper warp, keeping a close eye on each pass-through. Someone else has the all important job of keeping constant care that the knots on the back are tight and cleanly cut. I also keep my eyes trained on the lambskin drawing of the intricate design, especially being sure the correct color woolen yarn is being weaved. I cannot tell you the number of times the wrong string has been woven, or knotted at the wrong place, only to have to have it pulled back through the warp because of carelessness or the weaver becoming blurry- eyed from fatigue. I don’t have that problem, I guess because i have to keep aware all the time and the day goes past like a strong wind passing over the sand dunes. It is here and suddenly it is done. As you can see, making a rug is a family process. We have several looms going at one time; sometimes it gets crowded and always it gets warm and even hot. I bring an extra shift to change into when I feel the need, for I am a hygienic boy. Sometimes some of the boys and men work with their tops bare, their skin glistening with their effort. I choose not to.
The other job I am sometimes given is to look through the old drawings piled up in several crates, searching for design parts we can use on our borders or in the inner parts I call our motif. I am particularly interested in finding new flower designs. We have few flowers growing in our desert countryside although I hear more grow in the mountains. I am considered the artist of our family, although I think my sister, Sara, is better at drawing. I am more the idea person.
The most difficult job of all is making dyes and dying the wool different colors. We buy crushed flower blossoms and seeds and crushed seashells and ground-up leaves and boiled wood chips and roots from traveling traders from which we add steaming water and other liquids such as sheep and camel urine or maybe iron soil we obtain from people living near the mountains.
Some people go onto the mountains and bring back different things we can use for coloring such as fungi and certain tree bark and most prized are indigo plants. It takes years before our dyers become experts; in our family parents teach their knowledge to their children who will take over the vital jobs when they are needed to do so. I would like to share with you one more thing I have learned about dyers. You can always recognize a dyer because they have colored hands and arms and even lips. I once met a boy with purple hair and I knew right away his parents were dyers. Either that or he was a spawn of an underground devil. If you see such a person, it is best if you spit three times with your eyes closed. This is a precaution, and it works. And, don’t forget to praise Allah after the spitting.
A most important job is that of spinning the wool into yarn which is done in our family by my uncle and aunt we call Abib and Sara along with their four children. Actually Uncle Abib is our wool buyer as well as our main spinner. His wife, Aunt Sara, has the best eye for colors; it is she who decides when a dye’s hue is most brilliant and which colors are most harmonious with their neighbor. We turn to her oldest daughter, Yasmani, when Aunt Sara is feeling ill which seems to be happening more often at her age. I have been taught that the best thing to do when a family member falls ill is to have them drink fermented goat’s milk mixed with chinatree bark and have them ask Allah to make them strong again. I have seen it work a hundred times. It is the modern way.
We had a terrible situation the other day. Let me explain the background before telling you of our calamity. Our neighbor, a man known by the name of Keveh Tehrani, is our competitor as well as our neighbor, his family and ours having had a long standing competition related to who makes the best carpets in our part of this vast country of territories. We both sell our wares at the large bazaar in Tehit. There is a competition for being chosen as the best rug made that year, and the Tehrani and the Darvishi families place toward the top, depending upon the dyes and the knotting on back of the rug. Family pride often comes before selling price, with both families offering rugs at top prices. Both families prosper.
Back to the calamity. It was three weeks before the largest bazaar in Tehit where the competition was to take place. When we came into our weaving building that morning, we saw at once what had happened. Someone had broken one of our looms, the one I was in charge of, and the mostly finished carpet, in all its colorful glory, had been soaked with salt water and what smelled like strong camel urine. It was ruined and that was our family’s worst calamity in two generations. I won’t go into what happened to us when my father was a boy; the telling would be too upsetting and would bring back dark memories for my parents and my grandparents as well.
The adults of our extended family met that afternoon. My father told me about what was said and what was decided, because the family was counting on me and my sister to help them implement the solution they would attempt during the next three weeks. Simply stated, we would make a new design never before seen in our community and the most skilled in the family would weave the new design into a wondrous carpet made of lamb’s wool and silk that was being saved for a special rug.
I searched one last time among the old parchments and along with my aunt Sapporah, put together a rug design based on several ancient symbols, and the central theme would use a cypress tree design which was a very old symbol of life, the cypress trees being surrounded by a new flower motif designed by my father’s mother many years ago but never used until now. I had Sara draw the complete rug design which had on its border a repeated coiling vine of the flowers drawn by my aunt. In the middle she drew a large symbol based upon four cypress trees set around a diamond shape. We chose our most colorful woolen yarn, and were pleased to find silk threads in several vibrant colors including light blue, violet, deep yellow, and green, the silk threads to be wrapped around similar colored wool strands.
The rug would be woven for twelve hours a day for two weeks, enough time to finish it with tightly knotted threads on the back. The rug would be a small size, four by seven feet, a unique sized rug we had never seen before. Each weaver would work for six hours at a time. I would take my place each day for six hours, sometimes with a cousin at my side, watching closely every welf being weaved through the warp, playing close attention to the colored wool and silk strands being given to the weaver, playing attention as well to the design which had been rendered on a large scale by my talented sister. There was always one cousin and one aunt or uncle keeping track of the various colored strands, supplying them according to the design which estimated how much of each hue was needed. Particular care was taken by them to supply just the right complementary colors to cause the design elements to stand out as if in relief. Sometimes they made small changes to the designs, always for the better. My older cousins, Piquant and Souel, are our best knot tiers. They will have to work many hours a day.
The small rug or carpet as my father liked to call it, was finished after nine days. It was not revealed until the morning of the holiday bazaar when it was stretched out on a frame above the display of three of our regular sized carpets, all beautiful rugs in themselves. It drew an excited crowd who stared in awe or in question about what we had thought we were doing, displaying such an archaic Zoroastrian religious design, perhaps a besmirchment toward Muhammad, it was suggested by our neighbor. Mr.Tehrani. It has been said that he was once a suitor for our mother’s endearment which was won by Cyrus, our father. Of this I cannot say more.
The new design was debated by the judges who decided finally that our four rugs seen as one entity deserved second place, first place going to one of the judge’s cousins, to the judge’s stated embarrassment. They did declare that our new design was so unique and evoking of another place and time that it deserved a certificate of special merit. We decided to put the small rug, so exquisite and vibrant in color and ancient design, away for safekeeping. We sold the other three rugs along with others we had just finished for a better price than we had anticipated. Our largest and most beautiful rug was sold to Ishmael, the camel dealer, who always had to have the latest and the best. Praise be to him and to Allah who brought him to us.
The small rug of special merit was bound in a cedar wooden box lined with waxed linen, and the outside was rubbed with olive oil, then bound up by more waxed linen. A deep hole was dug in a lower chamber under the main house, and the box was buried six feet under the dirt floor. We did not want the rug desecrated or somehow damaged by religious idealists or by our jealous neighbor. We had no plans for the rug than to know we had made it to honor our family’s mastery and cohesiveness. Future generations would find it and know of our family’s skills. I will end this story with my usual nightly prayer to Allah to keep us all safe and to watch over you as well.”
In 1492, there was a date farmer named Reza Darvish, who lived with his two wives and thirteen children in a village just outside the small town of Tehit and near a small village known as Jinji. There was a mountain range nearby which at times kept desert breezes from honoring the town. It was not a walled village but did contain many sturdy structures set around a circular clearing lined with palm trees. The soil was a mixture of dirt and sand and was fertile enough to farm and to supply green grass for goats and sheep and even camels. The trees were watered by the natural spring bubbling inside the circle which made a little fountain the children liked to jump over. The water flowed into a stone trowel going around the circle, moistening the trees and the flowers growing under them. The spring was one of several sprouting nearby all of which supplied water for the village and for surrounding families living in the desert who came into the village to fill their clay pots. The women and men alike would carry two pots, one hanging down in front of each shoulder, held across their shoulders by a wooden yoke. Some of the more affluent nomadic families rode in on camels which had brightly colored carpets on their backs for the owners to sit on, The families lived in desert tents, the floors of which were lined with handsome and colorful rugs. It was said that many hundreds of years ago in these very lands, many more people were nomads who worshiped other gods until the prophet Zoroaster introduced the one god concept to the ancient Arab people. Of course he was eventually replaced by the true prophet, Muhammad.
Reza owned several hectares of land which were watered by a stone trowel, the land being rented to him by the village elders, the water being diverted from one of the water springs. There were other date farms and fig farms as well as animal farms with goats or sheep and there was one keeper of camels who bred the giant beasts, allowing him to enjoy a wealthy lifestyle including building a large house with window openings made of wood. Brightly colored and elaborately designed rugs covered the hard-packed dirt floors. There was a large outside oven for baking bread and roasting meats. Most houses had small outdoor ovens which were fired with dried animal dung, of which there were piles just outside the village, being sold by an enterprising widow named Hoda. Although she was a comely lady, flush with coin, she found that few men who approached her had stayed for very long.
Reza and his large family lived in several conjoined buildings made of mud bricks, one being built over a smaller ancient building. The interior stayed cool in the stifling desert air. That part of the house contained the sleeping quarters for the children and their mothers, while Reza had a separate small sleeping room in another building lined with ancient colorful rugs which had been handed down for many generations. That same house had a small sitting area, lined with fine rugs and kept to receive visiting relatives and friends. The most threadborne rugs were put on the floor of the larger sleeping quarters. Children slept on small piles of ancient rugs, of which there seemed to be hundreds. Some of the brightest were used to cover pillows stuffed with lambs wool or straw.
Everyone who lived near the desert knew that when what were called dust storms or desert storms rushed through and around their houses, old rugs were used to close off the window openings or else the dwelling would be filled with desert sand. One of the most hated jobs was that of rug beater who spent hours each day beating the sand and dust out of various rugs hung on twined ropes. All of the children after the age of eight took turns at this job. Sometimes a rug needed the strong hand of an adult and of course two adults were needed to hang the larger rugs and to be able to beat the dust out of the top parts of the hanging carpet. Notice that people used the word rug and carpet, both referring to the same most important woven covering anyone possessed.
Many large pillows were placed in large circles surrounding a round table in the middle which was used to hold food for communal eating. The pillows used for seating had long been soaked with olive oil mixed with the special iron red soil gotten from people living at the base of the mountains. It repelled spilled food. Meats were eaten by hand and flatbread was folded to be used as scoops for stews or thick sauces or boiled grains found growing at the base of the mountains. Strong wine or goat’s milk were drunk. Dates and figs, goat’s cheese and olives or sweetmeats were served last, sometimes the fruits being stewed or sweetened with honey or wine. Dessert was considered an essential part of the meal. On birthdays, special cakes were served, sometimes with small candles on top. This was the historical origin of the birthday cake.
A few of the oldest rugs were rolled tightly and placed in a small basement room under the ancient building, reachable by a wooden trap door hidden under the sea of colorful rugs. This small room dug under the building’s floor had a hard packed dirt floor, covered with a few threadbare rugs and was seldom visited. The family had always been told to keep these old rugs safe for future generations. No one knew why, but traditions were traditions.
This is a good place to tell of an old family myth. For tens of generations there had been tales of an old family treasure. It was often wondered, ”Was it gold? Was it silver? Was it jewels?” It was enough to make one’s heart beat faster, like it used to do when one was in first love. Some wondered if it was buried in the ancient basement, but it was understood by all that the basement area was sacred and most likely held an ancient curse from the olden times when it was said undead spirits roamed the desert sands. One scary story suggested that the basement was built on the site of a terrifying desert massacre between warring tribes of marauding Nomads, or from hostile invaders, a story so horrific that it had to be true. Such things existed in the barbaric past. Hearing this tale caused one to be thankful they now lived in a land protected by the great prophet, Muhammad who preached peace and acceptance.
Reza sometimes wondered if there was a hidden family treasure buried beneath the ancient inner room, although If he had found it, he would have thought it pretty enough and perhaps placed it on a wall or perhaps he would have thrown it down upon other old rugs and forgotten it. He did not especially appreciate ancient woven rugs, even the best of them. He did not understand why family history so revered them. He was, however, to place another family artifact under the ancient dirt floor, another family secret.
It happened suddenly during the middle of the night when Reza had been visited by his wife known as Yasmin who, unknown to Reza, was considered by the entire family as being his favored one. He lived totally unaware of the chronic conflict between Yasmin and his other wife, Zana, and the ongoing competition between each woman’s children. It was as if two separate competing families lived in the same houses, with the father of them all being kept in the dark. Actually, he did not know all his children and if asked their names and ages, would laugh and admit a total lack of knowledge about women’s things. He had offered his seed and a place to sleep and food to eat, and with that, he had done his fatherly duty. The rest was up to Allah.
That night Zana decided she would have it out with Yasmin who she knew was visiting her husband in his chamber, actually on the night she should have been with him. In a long pent-up fit of rage, she crept into Reza’s chamber holding a sharp kitchen knife and encountered Yasmin who was reclining in Reza’s carpeted bedding, in Zana’s husband’s arms.
Reza and Yasmin later could not recall the details, but it was clear that Zana had been stabbed to death, and something needed to be done at once before the sunrise. Reza carried his slain wife wrapped in a worn carpet, down to the ancient chamber where he dug a large hole four feet deep and buried his wife two feet above the ancient buried family treasure, praying to Allah for forgiveness and understanding. He had sprinkled over the body a potion of herbs and spices mixed with lime used to bury diseased animals. In the morning he had the sad story to tell all the children that his wife, Zana, had gone outside to the toilet pits during the night and had fallen and struck her head and unfortunately, Allah had taken her to heaven to be with him. He burned her in an empty casket and all the children suffered two weeks of mourning, followed by a special feast honoring their departed mother, assuring her swift ascension to heaven. A young camel was slaughtered and eaten by the family including Zana’s parents who traveled from another village ninety eight miles away, a trip of nearly two weeks.
Reza never married another woman, figuring they were too much work. He remained clueless as to why his one wife would want to harm his other wife, both of whom he had thought were fond of each other with a close bond only wives of special men such as himself possessed.
Many generations of Reza’s offspring, of which there were indeed many, lived in what became known as the family’s ancient compound, which had expanded beyond the crumbling old buildings built up over the original small mud brick structure with its two buried family secrets, one a family treasure.
In 1799, the family structures were abandoned entirely and left for the desert to reclaim. They had survived for over five hundred years under the hot desert days and the cooler desert nights.
The hundreds of ancient and merely old carpets were taken to a new family home built by the successful carpet seller, Javid Darvi, who started his business by selling thirty of the best of the hundreds of years-old carpets found in the old building’s small basement. It was believed by family legend that some of these carpets were woven by Darvishi family members eight or nine hundred years before. Many were woven by the generations of Darvishi weavers following them. The name of Darvishi was found in an ancient census parchment placed in the old Persian Museum in Tehran City.
Javid Darvi was approached by a man named Reza Darbani who introduced himself as being a scholar from Cairo, who was writing a book about the art of weaving Persian rugs and had found the name of one of the earliest rug weavers in Persia, one Cyrus Darvishi. He believed the man to be an extremely ancient forebearer of Javid. He had found mention of Darvisi and of Darvish families in the Persian Museum in Tehran and in an old manuscript found at the end of the 1400s in a private library of an old family who lived in Tehit, a family by the name of Tehrani. The parchment manuscript dated back to the tenth century.
According to the ancient Tehrani manuscript, one of the early carpet makers at that time was a carpet weaver named Keveh Tehrani who was a good friend of Cyrus Darvishi, a master weaver and one of the most prominent innovators. This man, Keveh Tehrani, wrote of a special carpet woven by the Darvishi family which was so innovative and beautiful that its ancient forms, archaic for that time, even considered anti-Muslim, were revered by all, winning accolades. Mr. Tehani was so moved that he attempted to buy the treasure on several occasions to present to the grand Mosque in Cairo itself as a gift of reverence from prominent citizens of the Persian empire such as himself. This he had written in his family’s history which was recently located buried under the family crypt in the town of Jinji. There was mention of a buried Darvishi family treasure which it was suggested contained information as to the whereabouts of the prized carpet. There was mention also that the prized carpet was a joint effort of the two lifelong friends, Cyrus Darvishi and Keveh Terrani, which would account for Mr. Terrani’s intense interest in the lost treasure.
In the year 1803, Javid planned a trip to Ciaro accompanied by his oldest sons, Giv and Ahura. They planned to visit the grand museum to look at their glorious collection of Persian carpets and to sell several of their own exquisite carpets at one of the city’s many carpet bazaars. In preparation for this journey, Javid and Giv visited the carpet museum in Tehran where they talked with a carpet scholar who showed them the original nine-hundred-year-old Terrani manuscript found in Jinjin, telling of a carpet-making family in the tenth century who may well have been their ancient relative; it was difficult to tell for there were many people over the centuries with the same or similar family names. The likelihood was strengthened by the locations of the ninth century family called Darvishi and this nineteenth century family named Darv, the locations being identical.
Javid asked Allah for guidance on this matter. Allah gave him his answer in a dream a few nights later in which Javid visited his ancient family in this very same desert, only nearly a thousand years before. He met his carpet weaving grandfather, of forty generations ago, who described the location of the hidden family treasure as being outside of Tehit, near the town of Jinji, and near the mountain range. It was located in the original family house. Javid awoke in the morning an excited man, for Jinji was an ancient nearby town not far from his own hometown, Tehit. He could see the mountain range in the distance.
Javid, his two oldest sons, and his uncle walked to the ancient town which was now inhabited by several Bedouin families living in tents whose floors were covered by old carpets. He sat down with one family, sharing cheese and dates he had brought for the occasion, and they told of several possible locations such as Javid described. One of the Bedouin men accompanied them to the sites which they examined carefully before Javid’s uncle picked the most likely site for them to dig. He had invoked Allah in making his decision, as he was prone to do.
There were several piles of old mud bricks scattered at the site. The uncle decided the best thing to do was to hoist the tallest of his nephews on his broad shoulders for the boy to get a view from afar, and the boy saw several things he excitedly related, one being a large circle-like indention and nearby, a straight-lined design in the sand, a subtle but definite shallow rendering where a building must have stood. He hopped down off the strong shoulders of his uncle and pointed out the indentations in the sand, drawing a straight lined rectangle of about fifteen by twenty-five feet. They found several ancient mud bricks laid in a row on the site of what was the original building, not having recognized the significance of the bricks before. They clearly saw the design, once it was delineated for them, and several deep holes were dug in the middle of what must have been the ancient structure, the holes being a foot apart. Nothing was discovered and they planned to return with more helpers to dig more holes.
At the end of two more days of digging, the burial box was discovered seven feet down,the land near the desert having built up over the hundreds of years since the box was hastily buried. Reza himself dug under where the box of bones had been found, and just two feet below he found the nine-hundred-year-old cedar box, larger and finer looking than the burial box. Javid and his sons carried the boxes back to their town, having opened only the box of bones which rattled when shook. Besides the skeletal bones, the box contained an ancient blackened knife and some beads. The contents made Javid shiver, like some ancient curse had escaped into the fresh air.
For some reason, Javid hesitated to open the older box and considered having the museum’s carpet expert open it. Instead, after placing the box on his finest carpet and saying prayers of thanks to Allah, he tried to open the wooden box. It seemed to be covered by a thin dark cloth which was in tatters. The box would not open even though it had no lock. His wife suggested they seep a tiny amount of olive oil into the crack around the top, and Javid was then able to pry open the lid. Inside they found a smaller box, darkened with age, in which were parchments stuck together. Under the dark box was a bound little rug covered with sheepskin, some worn away and some sticking to the bottom of the carpet roll, to its tight pile of knots.
Over the next few days they carried both boxes to the museum in Tehran. Two months later a report came out of Tehran that an important new find had been discovered, one of the earliest Persian carpets ever recovered, which had originally been woven to be four by seven meters, the carpet being mostly intact except for one partial edge which was likely infested by ancient sand ants which had been buried along with the carpet. Also recovered were several important ancient carpet designs drawn on lamb’s skin. A few parchments had so far been pried apart for examination. The finding included a separate burial box containing complete skeletal bones of a woman, a black knife, and a beaded necklace. It presented a mystery from the past and it was suggested that she was a deceased member of the early carpet weaving family, her bones guarding the treasured rug from long buried spirits.
“A local man, Javid Darvi, discovered the priceless national treasures which were probably buried in the tenth century by his carpet weaving ancestors. Mr. Darvi was described as being a prominent carpet dealer who commented that Persian rugs must be in his blood. He contributed the important discovery to the country. Mr. Darvi has been approached by the National Museum in Cairo, Egypt, to add his family’s story to the famous Terrani manuscript mentioning a possible ancient ancestor of the Darvis who weaved an extraordinary small carpet, a treasure lost for centuries. Could this new and astounding finding be the lost treasure? Experts hope to answer this question in time for inclusion in a definitive book on the history of Persian Rugs which was being readied for printing.”
In the late twentieth century DNA testing would show that the female skeletal bones were five hundred to six hundred years newer than the precious objects found in the cedar box, adding an inexplicable mystery to the archeological finding. Current thinking at the time of testing was that the deceased woman was considered so important that her remains were buried so as to be found alongside the tenth century small rug. Both were seen as treasures from different eras.
In May of 2015, Giv Darv was writing a research paper for his Ancient History of Iran class at the University of Tehran, about the history of his country’s exalted rugs which were considered the finest in the world. He knew about his early nineteenth century relatives, especially the story of how Javid Darvi started the family carpet-selling business selling exquisite old Darvishi carpets. Javid had made his world famous discovery in the old desert town of Jinji. He wrote the research paper with pride, using as his primary source, “The Definitive History of Persian Rugs,” published in 1804, by the National Museum of Cairo. An entire chapter was devoted to the most prominent carpet weaving family in Iran’s history, detailing the over eleven hundred years of carpet weaving and carpet selling history. Many of the hundreds of Darvishi generations lived within a few square miles of each other.
Giv cited several secondary sources taken from the internet. In his report he concluded that his family name had originally been Darvishi, then was changed to Darvish, and then to Darvi, and finally to Darv. He could hardly be expected to know why the names changed over eleven hundred years, but concluded that everything else had changed during that vast time except for one thing. Perian rugs were still being made on looms by hand very much like they have always been made. He concluded his report with his statement that those ancient desert people had perfected something that had held up for a millennium of years.
Giv’s report included colorful pictures of the best current and ancient Persian rugs. The last photograph depicted an unusual early Persian rug, about four by seven feet in size, displaying a colorful and intricate inner design motif of four cyprus trees set around a large triangle, surrounded by flowers, the rug’s tightly woven woolen threads of blue, violet, green, and deep yellow beset with shimmering silk overtones. The rug’s colors remained brilliant and vibrant, honoring the natural dyes made primarily from nearby sources. The design elements were outlined in ways giving them depth seldom seen in ancient weavings. On the back the small knots tightened by time were precise and perfect. The caption under the photograph, written by Giv Darv, declared that this earliest Persian rug, now known as the Darvishi Family Carpet, was only slightly damaged, and was eleven hundred years old. It was considered a treasure for the ages. There was no mention of a woman’s skeleton.
