The dress of early Sumerian women is somewhat uncertain; if we might assume the form of dress shown on the little stone statuette discovered by De Sarzec at Tellô (cf. Fig. 33, p. 224) to be typical, the feminine dress of the period would appear to have consisted in a flounced woollen skirt hung from the left shoulder, the right arm and shoulder being exposed. The length of the fillet-bound hair in the statuette referred to removes all doubt as to the sex, and it is noteworthy that the dress of this Sumerian woman is exactly the same as that of the individual on Ur-Ninâ’s stele referred to above, and of course the personage there may conceivably be a woman also (cf. further p. 186). But the little copper statuettes of women belonging to the same period always show a nude bust, it is therefore probable that the women of the time generally wore an ordinary skirt like the men, the shoulder-suspended garments being reserved for the élite. The dress of royalties and grandees differed however from that of the commonalty in quality rather than in character: thus the skirts of all Ur-Ninâ’s courtiers—the distinguished leader of the procession alone being excepted—are much the same as that of their royal master; but the quality is very different, the one being entirely plain, the other extremely elaborate. In later times what had been the exception seemingly becomes the rule, and in Gudea’s period the left shoulder was always covered by the folds of the mantle-like garment then in vogue; while the Semite Narâm-Sin, of yet earlier date than Gudea, wears a plaid passing over his left shoulder and wrapped around his body, leaving the right arm similarly free. The pleated plaid worn by Narâm-Sin finds a striking parallel in the garments worn by Nin-gish-zi-da and the accompanying deity on a Gudea stele in the Berlin Museum (cf. _Sum. and Sem._, Taf. VII). The royal head-gear of Gudea differs from that of later times, and probably from that worn by the earlier rulers of Lagash: it consists in an embroidered turban, differing entirely from the conical-shaped cap worn by Narâm-Sin on the Pir-Hussein stele, and the similar shaped crowns of the later Assyrian kings, but bearing some resemblance to that worn by Khammurabi on his famous code-stele (cf. Plates, XXIII, XIV; Fig. 31). But while the Semite Narâm-Sin wears a long beard, the Sumerian Gudea is still beardless. So too the Semite Khammurabi wears a long beard, but the mantle slung from his left shoulder is not unlike that of Gudea, while the vesture of the god Shamash on the same stele is pleated like that of Narâm-Sin, though the material would appear to be different. In a later relief of the time of Nabû-aplu-iddina, king of Babylon about 870 B.C., the god Shamash wears a striped robe with sleeves, and the practice of leaving the right arm and shoulder exposed seems to have by this time fallen into desuetude (cf. Pl. XIV).