Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/493

 Industrial Arts. 469 the best informed writers, or such as wished to appear so, Hero- dotus, Xenophon, and after him Ctesias, who traversed the country lying between the capital of Media and Susa, have recorded the fact that they perceived no town worthy of mention, none to be compared with the busy centres of Mesopotamia teeming with population. This is not to be explained by the distance separating Persia from Greece, but because city life began very late on the uplands of Fars. A notion of the social state and the manners of the natives in the time of Cyrus may be gathered from the description Sir H. Layard gives of the ordinary life of the Bakthyaris, amongst whom he lived a year or two in his youth.* Of course, when Persia became the mistress of the East, the bulk of those tribes followed the kin^^ in his campaigns, as body-guards and officers ; in the latter capacity they either lived with him or were despatched to govern the several provinces of the empire. Thus transplanted, they yielded to die influence of the peoples they had conquered, who were possessed, however, of greater wealth and culture. But those who remained quietly at home were long in changing their habits. The industries they practised were of the simple kind which woodmen and husbandmen cannot dis- pense with, and among their crafts there is only that of carpet manufacture, which, had not its productions wholly disappeared, could have passed as work of any artistic merit Carpets must always have been necessaries to cover the earth floor of the tent and the house. At the present day the finest looms come from the northern provinces of Iran, especially Khorasan ; but it b not probable that at that time the &bri.cs of those districts had acquired any repute. The great king, it would appear, procured from Lydia and Babylonia carpets for the halls and courts of his palaces ; * and the models thus introduced in Persia were in all likelihood soon copied with success. On the one hand, the weaver had wools of excellent quality, and on the other the arrangement of the royal residence induced a large demand for drapery of all Parthia, Tigrano-certa, Carcathio-certa, etc (Rawluison, The Five Great Monarchies^ tuin. iii. p. 91, n. 28). The above reference has no such note, nor do the names appear in the index. — Trs, ' For Lydian carpets we have the testimony of Athenseus (xii. 514, C), whilst Arrian writes that the coffin of Cyrus at Fasargadse was covered " with Babyl<mian carpets" {Aitabasist VI. xxix. 5). Digitized by Google
 * Layard, Early Adventures in Persia,