"Spindle and Bow", a first novel by Bevis Longstreth, tells a story of love, adventure and the transcendent power of art at the dawning of civilization. Set in the 5th Century BCE, this human drama spans some 3,000 miles, from the ancient city of Sardis at the western edge of the Persian Empire close to the Aegean Sea in Turkey, to the village of Pazyryk, a Scythian village in the Altai Mountains of southwestern Siberia. There is a factual element to the story. When in 1949 a Scythian royal tomb was opened at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains in the heart of Central Asia, Russian archeologists discovered the frozen and mummified remains of a man and a woman. Nearby was a sophisticated knotted pile carpet in nearly perfect, condition preserved by the freezing conditions in the tomb. Popularly known as the Pazyryk Carpet, it now hangs in St. Petersburg at the Hermitage Museum. Recognized as a towering achievement in art and weaving, the Pazyryk Carpet, which has been scientifically dated to the 5th-4th century BCE, remains unsurpassed by textiles of later eras.
Yet there is no scholarly agreement on the who, why and where of its weaving, nor on the connection of this great work of art to the couple in the tomb. "Spindle and Bow" supplies an imaginative answer to these questions. Rachel, a young Jewish weaver growing up in Sardis, is a craftswoman of consummate skill. Her accomplishments attract the attention of Cyrus the Younger, Satrap for the western region of the Achaemenid Empire, and brother of Artaxerxes, King of Kings. Amid the opulence of the Sardian Court, where Rachel weaves in the royal workshop, she meets Targitus, a Scythian prince come from Central Asia to learn the Sardians' closely kept secrets of gold purification. What unfolds is the imagined, yet strongly plausible story of Rachel and Targitus, who are thrown together by chance and become deeply attracted to one another despite powerful centrifugal forces arising from their vastly different cultures. Through the braiding together of two lives, the story tells of how the oldest pile carpet in existence came to be woven.
- ISBN10 1898113556
- ISBN13 9781898113553
- Publish Date 9 June 2005
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 20 May 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Laurence King Publishing
- Format Paperback
- Pages 288
- Language English