History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12)Maspero, G. (Gaston)
History
History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12)
Maspero, G. (Gaston)
Civilization, Ancient; Egypt -- History -- To 640 A.D.; History, Ancient; Middle East -- History
The shirt had no sleeves, and the fringed garment which covered it
left half of the arm exposed. Children of tender years had their heads
shaved, as a head-dress, and rejoiced in no more clothing than the
little ones among the Egyptians. With the exception of bracelets,
anklets, rings on the fingers, and occasionally necklaces and earrings,
the Syrians, both men and women, wore little jewellery. The Chaldaea
women furnished them with models of fashion to which they accommodated
themselves in the choice of stuffs, colours, cut of their mantles or
petticoats, arrangement of the hair, and the use of cosmetics for the
eyes and cheeks. In spite of distance, the modes of Babylon reigned
supreme. The Syrians would have continued to expose their right shoulder
to the weather as long as it pleased the people of the Lower Euphrates
to do the same; but as soon as the fashion changed in the latter region,
and it became customary to cover the shoulder, and to wrap the upper
part of the person in two or three thicknesses of heavy wool, they at
once accommodated themselves to the new mode, although it served to
restrain the free motion of the body. Among the upper classes, at least,
domestic arrangements were modelled upon the fashions observed in the
palaces of the nobles of Car-chemish or Assur: the same articles of
toilet, the same ranks of servants and scribes, the same luxurious
habits, and the same use of perfumes were to be found among both.*
* An example of the fashion of leaving the shoulder bare is
found even in the XXth dynasty. The Tel el-Amarna tablets
prove that, as far as the scribes were concerned, the
customs and training of Syria and Chaldaea were identical.
The Syrian princes are there represented as employing the
cuneiform character in their correspondence, being
accompanied by scribes brought up after the Chaldaean manner.
We shall see later on that the king of the Khati, who
represented in the time of Ramses II. the type of an
accomplished Syrian, had attendants similar to those of the
Chaldaean kings.
From all that we can gather, in short, from the silence as well as from
the misunderstandings of the Egyptian chroniclers, Syria stands before
us as a fruitful and civilized country, of which one might be thankful
to be a native, in spite of continual wars and frequent revolutions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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