The Achaemenid Pazyryk Carpet or Rug, is the oldest surviving carpet in the world. Since most of the rugs or carpets were made out of wool, silk, or cotton early on, all of these materials decay over time making the "history" of the throw rugs or carpet very hard to determine. However, the Achaemenid Empire (559 BC-330 BC) was the first of the Persian Empires to rule over significant portions of Greater Iran. At the height of its power, the Empire spanned over three continents and one of their rugs made it alive over time.
The hand-knotted pile carpet probably originated in southern Central Asia between the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC (before Christ). The art of carpet weaving existed in Iran in ancient times, according to evidences and in the opinion of scientists, the 500 BC Pazyric carpet dating back to the Achaemenid period.
This art underwent many changes in various eras of the Iranian history to an extent that it passed an upward trend before the Islamic era until the Mongols invasion of Iran. After the invasion, the art began to grow again during the reign of the Mongol dynasties of Timurid and Ilkhanid. As stated earlier, the passage of time, the original materials used in rugs and carpets, including wool, silk and cotton, decay over time - even today the same holds true even though most are chemically treated in the factory before shipping.
Therefore archaeologists are rarely able to make any particularly useful discoveries during archaeological excavations. What has remained from early times as evidence of carpet-weaving is nothing more than a few pieces of worn-out threads. Such fragments do not help very much in recognizing the carpet-weaving characteristics or techniques of pre-Seljuk period (13th and 14th centuries AD) in Persia. The earliest surviving pile carpet in the world is called the "Pazyryk Carpet," dating from the 5th-4th century BCE. It was excavated by Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko in 1949 from a Siberian burial ground where it had been preserved in ice in the valley of Pazyryk. The origin of this carpet is attributed to either the Iranian Scythians or the Persian Achaemenids.
The earliest group of surviving knotted pile carpets was produced under Seljuk rule in the first half of the 13th century on the Anatolian peninsula. The eighteen extant works are often referred to as the Konya Carpets. The central field of these large carpets is a repeated geometrical pattern. The borders are ornamented with a large-scale, stylized, angular calligraphy called Kufic, pseudo-Kufic, or Kufesque.
