Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/112

 94 A History of Art in Chai kiw and Assyria. The origin of such a notion is to be sought, perhaps, so far as Mesopotamia is concerned, in a wise hygiene and in the rapid changes of an uncertain climate. The difference between the extremes of summer and winter temperature is far greater than in Egypt or on the Ionian coasts, and precautions had to be taken at one time against a scorching sun, at another against the cold of the nights. However this may have been, it is certain that these people, although they lived in a hot country, went about in a costume that covered their bodies as completely as that of modern Europe. It consisted of a long tunic, a tunica talaria (?) as the Romans would call it, and a mantle. The tunic left nothing exposed but the head and neck, the forearms, and the feet and ankles. It must have been of linen or hempen cloth; 1 when worn by a rich man it was embroidered and decorated about the foot with a sort of gimp fringe. The tunics of the poor were short and plain, often coming hardly lower than the knee. They were also looser and better fitted to work in ; but they are never wanting altogether, even to the men of the corvée, the slaves and prisoners of war whom we see employed in the construction of the royal buildings (Vol. I. Figs. 151 and 152). Women were dressed in chemises coming down to their feet (Vol. I. Fig. 30), resembling the long robe of coarse blue cotton which still forms the only garment of the peasant women of Egypt and Syria. Sometimes we find a sort of cape thrown over the tunic (Vol. I. Fig. 31, and below, Fig. 44). As for the mantle, it was a fringed shawl, and, like the Greek peplos or the Roman toga, could be arranged in many different ways. In the painting at Beni-Hassan which shows us the arrival in Egypt of a band of Asiatic emigrants, 2 it leaves one shoulder and both arms uncovered, and forms a kind of frock round the body, which it entirely conceals. In the old Chaldaean statues from Sirtella the arrangement is more graceful (see Plate VI.) ; the piece of cloth is folded double and carried obliquely round the body so as to cover the left arm and shoulder and leave the right a man, to be seen naked." Conf. Plato, Republic, 452, c ; Thucydides, i. 6; Xenophon, Hellenica, iii. iv. 19. 1 Herodotus, i. 195 ; "As for their dress they wore a linen tunic coming down to their feet, and, over that, a woollen tunic. Finally they wrapped themselves in a short white cloak." 2 Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. fig. 98.