The game of ball was of course generally played out of doors. It was not confined to children, nor to one sex, though the mere amusement of throwing and catching it appears to have been considered more particularly adapted to women. They had different modes of playing. Sometimes a person unsuccessful in catching the ball was obliged to suffer another to ride on her back, who continued to enjoy this post until she also missed it; the ball being thrown by an opposite player, mounted in the same manner, and placed at a certain distance, according to the space previously agreed upon; and, from the beast-of-burden office of the person who had failed, the same name was probably applied to her as to those in the Greek game, "who were called asses, and were obliged to submit to the commands of the victor." Sometimes they caught three or more balls in succession, the hands occasionally crossed over the breast; they also threw it up to a height and caught it, like our "sky-ball;" and the game described by Homer to have been played by Halius and Laodamus, in the presence of Alcinous, was known to them; in which one party threw the ball as high as he could, and the other, leaping up, caught it on its fall, before his feet again touched the ground. When mounted on the backs of the losing party, the Egyptian women sat sidewise. Their dress consisted merely of a short petticoat, without a body, the loose upper robe being laid aside on these occasions; it was bound at the waist with a girdle, supported by a strap over the shoulder, and was nearly the same as the undress garb of mourners, worn during the funeral lamentation on the death of a friend. The balls were made of leather or skin, sewed with string, crosswise, in the same manner as our own, and stuffed with bran, or husks of corn; and those which have been found at Thebes are about three inches in diameter. Others were made of string, or of the stalks of rushes, platted together so as to form a circular mass, and covered, like the former, with leather. They appear also to have had a smaller kind of ball probably of the same materials, and covered, like many of our own, with slips of leather of a rhomboidal shape, sewed together longitudinally, and meeting in a common point at both ends, each alternate slip being of a different color; but these have only been met with in pottery. In one of their performances of strength and dexterity, two men stood together side by side, and, placing one arm forward and the other behind them, held the hands of two women, who reclined backwards, in opposite directions, with their whole weight pressed against each other's feet, and in this position were whirled round; the hands of the men who held them being occasionally crossed, in order more effectually to guarantee the steadiness of the centre, on which they turned.