Imre Jakabffy (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 2. (Budapest, 1974)

GOMBOS, Károly: An interesting Tekke-Turkoman carpet

published in 1966 in Cambridge follow the classification as regards to the patterns according to the characteristics of certain tribes. In this way there are: Salor, Saryk, Tekke, Ersari. Yomud and Chowdor designs and besides them also other smaller tribes have their characteristic patterns.

15 V.G. Moskova late Soviet ethnographer gave in her posthumous book (published in Taskent, 1970) a logical explanation about the origin of ,,gul"-s used by Turkoman tribes and their application on carpets.

16 The noted scholar examined and presented more than 900 Central Asian carpets in her book. She had a really vast knowledge about the wool-material of carpets, about the characters of the material, the secret if dying and dye-making, the whole process of carpet-making, the industrial arts of the Central Asian tribes, their everyday life, the history and ethnography of Turkoman tribes. In the possession of her large knowledge she was able to explore with complete certainty that these designs admired on Turkoman carpets are in actual fact the totems, seals and signs of pastoral tribes, used respectively as conventional marks by them. Ármin Vámbéry mentions in his book about the origin and custom of the Turks that: "the seals or stamps (tamga) of certain clans are old, very old". Later on he writes: "As stamps, as the recognition marks of the animals of certain tribes they formed surely an integral part in the life of the nomads".

17 Ármin Vámbéry observes that the young nomad boys had to be fully aware of the condition of the wells that supplied with water the herd, of the confines of the range lands, of the form of the marks on the animals distinguishing one tribe's animals from the other ones, though these marks are very similar each other. S.G. Agadzanov Soviet Turkoman historian who has written up the history of Turkoman and Oguz-Turkish tribes of the IX

—XIII centuries at the explanation of their legends of origin throws light on the functional role of the lamb held in veneration and believed as ancestor and protecting totem-animal. According to the Turkoman customs the lamb is one of the most valued animals, greatly respected, especially the black lambs. In olden times the lambs' cranium was used against bewitching and lambs' horns were placed on the tombs of ancient or on the trees considered "holy". In other cases they conferred a religious veneration to other animals (e.g. dappled horses) with a preference for birds of prey, or some plants.

18 The reason for the immutability of stamps and signs of Turkoman tribes is explained by the fact that they cultivated nomadic shepherding unceasingly for centuries, and their social and economical system did not change by far. The situation is an other for the settled Turkomans who were engaged in agriculture, in gardening, and in silkworm breeding. They did not make carpets themselves, they bought them from other tribes. These agricultural tribes lost their ancient traditions so many times ago. Naturally the "gul" designs have greatly changed and the totem-signs relating to the respective Turkoman tribes can scarcely ever be recognized. The cause of this is to be searched partly in the process of the carpet-making because the ornamentation shaped up with knotting contains only the most important elements and so the weaving women had to pass over everything that was irrelevant. So in vain we should look for the natural representations of conventional signs, though the symbolical reproductions of birds of prey (falcon, eagle 138