Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/52

 complete the costume. The heads are bare ; one or two wisps of hair stand up above the forehead and long tresses hang almost to the waist behind. The same costume and mode of dressing the hair occurs in a very early bronze found in Northern Phoenicia, near Latakieh (Fig. 28). The upper part of the head is wanting, but the long tresses, the schenti with its vertical band and the high boots, are all there. With the passage of time the national costume underwent a change. A dress that left the bust and legs uncovered was well enough fitted, as a rule, for men who laboured in fields or work- shops, but on the Syrian coast there are times when rapid falls of FIG. 27. Natives of Keft bringing gifts to Pharaoh. From Wilkinson. temperature demand a longer and more ample garment, something, in short, like the aba of the modern Arab of Syria. Syria does not enjoy the steady climate of the Nile valley, and when the Phoenicians began to navigate the Levant, and passed in the course of a few days from the burning shores of Egypt and Palestine to the colder latitudes of the ^gsean and Adriatic, they soon learnt the necessity for a style of dress which could protect them against wind and rain, and keep them warm in the chills of evening, night, and morning. In what we may call their modern period they seem, however, to have changed the national dress of their early years for a long and ample robe held in at the waist by a girdle. In its large folds the Phoenician merchant, like the Armenian or