one, from a plain band to highly decorated diadems. The
Ethiopians of Tirhakah’s army (7th cent.) stuck a single feather
in the front of their fillet, and a feathered ornament recurs from
the old Babylonian goddess with two large feathers on her head
to the feathered crown common from Assur-bani-pal’s Arabians
to Ararat, and is familiar from the later distinctive Persian head-dress.[1]
But the ordinary Semitic head covering was a cloth
which sometimes appears with two ends tied in front, the third
falling behind. Or it falls over the nape of the neck and is kept
in position with a band; or again as a cloth cap has lappets
to protect the ears. Sometimes it
has a more bulky appearance. In
general, the use of a square or
rectangular cloth (whether folded
diagonally or not) corresponds to
the modern keffiyeh woven with
long fringes which are plaited into
cords knitted at the ends or
worked into little balls sewn over
with coloured silks and golden
threads.[2] The keffiyeh covering
cheek, neck and throat, is worn
over a small skull-cap and will
be accompanied with the relatively
modern fez (tarbūsh) and a woollen cloth. Probably
the oldest head-dress is the circular close-fitting cap
(plain or braided), which, according to Meyer, is of Sumerian
(non-Semitic) origin. But it has a long history. Palestinian
captives in the Assyrian age wear it with a plain close-fitting
tunic, and it appears upon the god Hadad in north Syria (cf.
also the Gezer seal, fig. 13). With some deities (e.g. the
moon-god Sin) it has a kind of straight brim which gives it a
certain resemblance to a low-crowned “bowler.” Very characteristic
is the conical cap which, like the Persian hat (Gr. kurbasia),
resembled a cock’s comb. It is worn by gods and men, and with
the latter sometimes has ear-flaps (at Lachish, with other
varieties, Ball, 190) or is surmounted by a feather or crest. It
was probably made of plaited leather or felt. Veritable helmets
of metal, such as Herodotus ascribes to
Assyrians and Chalybians (vii. 63, 76), and
metal armour, though known farther
west, scarcely appear in old oriental
costume, and the passage which attributes
bronze helmets and coats of mail
to the Philistine Goliath and the Israelite
Saul cannot be held (on other grounds) to
be necessarily reliable for the middle or
close of the 11th century (1 Sam. xvii).
A loftier head-covering was sometimes
spherical at the top and narrowed in the
middle; with a brim or border turned up
back and front it is worn by Hittite
warriors of Zenjīrli and by their god of
storm and war (fig. 14). Elongated and
more pointed it is the archaic crown of
the Pharaohs (symbolical of upper Egypt),
is worn by a Hittite god of the 14th
century, and finds parallels upon old
cultus images from Asia Minor, Crete and
Cyprus. Later, Herodotus describes it as
distinctively Scythian (vii. 64). Finally the cylindrical hat of
Hittite kings and queens reappears with lappets in Phoenicia
(Perrot and Chipiez, Phoen. ii. 77); without the brim it resembles
the crown of the Babylonian Merodach-nadin-akhi, with a feathered
top it distinguishes Adad (god of storm, &c.) at Babylonia.
Narrower at the top and surmounted by a spike it distinguishes
the Assyrian kings.
When the deities were regarded as anthropomorphic they naturally wore clothing which, on the whole, was less subject to change of fashion and was apt to be symbolical of their attributes. The old Babylonian hero Gilgamesh Costume of the Gods. and the Egyptian Bes (perhaps of foreign extraction) are nude, and so in general are the figurines of the Ishtar-Astarte type. Numerous bronze images of a kneeling god at Telloh give him only a loin-cloth, and often the deity, like the monarch, has only a skirt. In course of time various plaids or mantles are assumed, and in Babylonia the goddesses were the first to have both shoulders covered. Distinctive features are found in the head-dress, e.g. crowns (cf. the Ammonite god, 2 Sam. xii. 30) or horns (a single pair or an arrangement of four pairs), and in Babylonia symbolical emblems are attached to the shoulders (e.g. the rays of the sun-god, stalks, running water). Long garments ornamented with symbolical designs (stars, &c.) are worn by Marduk and Adad. The custom of clothing images is well known in the ancient world, and at the restoration of an Egyptian temple care was taken to anoint the divine limbs and to prepare the royal linen for the god. The ceremonial clothing of the god on the occasion of festal processions, undertaken in Egypt by the “master of secret things,” may be compared with the well-known Babylonian representations of such promenades. The Babylonian temples received garments as payment in kind, and the Egyptian lists in the Papyrus Harris (Rameses III.) enumerate an enormous number of skirts, tunics and mantles, dyed and undyed, for the various deities. A priest, “master of the wardrobe,” is named as early as the VIth Dynasty, and later texts refer to the weavers and laundry servants of the temple. It is probable that 2 Kings xxiii. 7 originally referred to the women who wove garments for the goddess in the temple at Jerusalem.
In Egypt the king was regarded as the incarnation of the deity, his son and earthly likeness. The underlying conception shows itself under differing though not unrelated forms over western Asia, and in their light the question of religious Royal costume. and ceremonial dress is of great interest. Throughout Egyptian history the official costume was conventionalized, and the latest kings and even the Roman emperors are arrayed like their predecessors of the IVth Dynasty. The crook which figures among royal and divine insignia may go back to the boomerang-like object which was a prominent weapon in antiquity (Müller, 123 sq.). It appears in old Babylonia as a curved stick, and, like the club, is a distinctive symbol of god and king. It resembles the sceptre curved at the end, which was carried by old Hittite gods. The Pharaoh’s characteristic crown (or crowns) symbolized his royal domains, the sacred uraeus marked his divine ancestry, and he sometimes appeared in the costume of the gods with their fillets adorned with double feathers and horns. In Babylonia Naram-Sin in the guise of a god wears the pointed helmet and two great horns distinctive of the deities.[3] This relationship between the gods and their human representatives is variously expressed. Khammurabi and the sun-god Shamash, on the former’s famous code of laws, have the same features and almost the same frizzled beard, and, according to Meyer, the king in claiming supremacy over Sumer and Akkad wears the costume of the lands.[4] Ordinary folk could not claim these honours, and in Egypt, where shaving was practically universal, artificial beards were worn upon solemn occasions as a peculiar duty. But the appendage of the official was shorter than that of the king, and the gods had a distinctive shape for themselves; if it appears upon the dead it is because they in their death had become identified with the god Osiris (Erman, 59, 225 sq.). Young Egyptian princes and youthful kings had
- ↑ Meyer, 97, see F. Hommel, Aufsätze u. Abhandlungen (Munich, 1900), 160 sqq., 214 sqq. For other feathered head-dresses in western Asia, see Müller, 361 sqq.
- ↑ Such tasselled or fringed caps were used by the Syrians in the Christian era, see W. Budge, Book of Governors, ii, 339, 367.
- ↑ Comp. the horns of Bau (“mother of the gods”), Samas (Shamash), (H)adad, and (in Egypt) of the Asiatic god assimilated to Set (so, too, Rameses III. is styled “strong-horned” like Baal). With the band dependent from the conical hat of Marduk-bal-iddin II. (Meyer, 8) and other kings, cf. the tail on the head-dress of this foreign Set (e.g. Proc. Soc. of Bibl. Arch. xvi. 87 sq.). The consort of the Pharaoh, in turn, wore the sacred vulture head-dress.
- ↑ On the resemblance between divine and royal figures in costume, &c., see further Meyer, 9, 14 sq., 17, 23, 53 sq., 67, 79, 102, 105 sq.
