Don’t think of Threads of Empire as a book about just carpets. Rather, it is a fascinating exploration of the parts twelve carpets have played in world events. Carpets, usually woven by nameless women, have been desired throughout history by sultans and holy men, tycoons and tyrants, and their histories shed light on power dynamics across the ages. The author, Dorothy Armstrong, is a former fellow in carpet studies at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, and the book contains exquisite images and descriptions of some of the rarest and most important carpets ever made. 

Armstrong describes where and when, by whom (as far as one can tell) and for whom each carpet was originally made, and then investigates its afterlife at the feet of the individuals who owned it. Threads of Empire spans the globe, though there is a particular focus on the Near East, where most of these carpets were produced, and Europe and North America, where they have ended up. In Armstrong’s expert hands, they reveal cultural biases, colonial greed and gender prejudice.

The oldest carpet in the book dates from the third or fourth century BC. It was excavated from a Scythian burial mound in the Altai Mountains, at the edge of the Siberian Arctic, in 1949. Preserved in muddy ice were the bodies of a tattooed Mongoloid chieftain and his Caucasian