FOUR COPTIC TEXTILES FROM THE LOUVRE COLLECTION 14C REDATED AFTER 55 YEARS

Dating of Coptic textiles performed in the early days of the radiocarbon dating method was revisited. In 1957-1958, Louvre curator and art historian P du Bourguet had 4 Coptic textiles C-14 dated by the Saclay laboratory. The results were rejected, not because of the large standard deviation (>100 yr), but because their ages did not support his chronological framework based on typological comparison. Furthermore, textiles with comparable ages were dated several centuries apart. As a result of this investigation, for many decades art historians rejected C-14 as a dating tool for Coptic textiles. Re-examination of the old data and new C-14 analyses revealed that mistakes were made, both in the reporting as in the interpretation of the data and that the textiles are much older than presumed.