Here is a beautifully woven and compelling antique Oriental textile - an antique Indian velvet textile, woven in India during the 19th century and based on the iconic earlier artistic Byzantine textiles. Characterized by its alluring composition as well as its velvet material, this antique Indian textile is an appealing and important example. This sumptuous antique Indian velvet textile is based upon the silk twill textiles of the early Byzantine and early Umayyad or Islamic periods. The pattern of circular medallions or roundels with figural equestrian hunting scenes of this kind was originally Sassanian Persian. During the sixth and seventh centuries, such Sassanian silks were imitated by the workshops in Constantinople, and they continued to be made in Persia under Early Islamic or Umayyad rule in the eighth century. Here the design is adapted to the velvet technique used by the Ottoman Turks and Safavid Persians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As such the piece is eclectic, but it reproduces the luxuriousness and elegance of the various prototypes with remarkable fidelity and technical mastery.