Museum of Antiquity: A Description of Ancient LifeYaggy, L. W. (Levi W.)
History
Museum of Antiquity: A Description of Ancient Life
Yaggy, L. W. (Levi W.)
Civilization, Ancient; Classical antiquities
Those most common in the houses of the rich were the single and double
chair (answering to the Greek _thronos_ and _diphros_), the latter
sometimes kept as a family seat, and occupied by the master and
mistress of the house, or a married couple. It was not, however,
always reserved exclusively for them, nor did they invariably occupy
the same seat; they sometimes sat like their guests on separate
chairs, and a _diphros_ was occasionally offered to visitors, both men
and women.
Many of the fauteuils were of the most elegant form. They were made of
ebony and other rare woods, inlaid with ivory, and very similar to
some now used in Europe. The legs were mostly in imitation of those of
an animal; and lions' heads, or the entire body, formed the arms of
large fauteuils, as in the throne of Solomon (I Kings, x. 19). Some,
again, had folding legs, like our camp-stools; the seat was often
slightly concave; and those in the royal palace were ornamented with
the figures of captives, or emblems of dominion over Egypt and other
countries. The back was light and strong, and consisted of a single
set of upright and cross bars, or of a frame receding gradually and
terminating at its summit in a graceful curve, supported from without
by perpendicular bars; and over this was thrown a handsome pillow of
colored cotton, painted leather, or gold and silver tissue, like the
beds at the feast of Abasuerus, mentioned in Esther, or like the
feathered cushions covered with stuffs and embroidered with silk and
threads of gold in the palace of Scaurus.
Seats on the principle of our camp-stools seem to have been much in
vogue. They were furnished with a cushion, or were covered with the
skin of a leopard, or some other animal, which was removed when the
seat was folded up; and it was not unusual to make even head-stools,
or wooden pillows on the same principle. They were also adorned in
various ways, bound with metal plates, and inlaid with ivory, or
foreign woods; and the wood of common chairs was often painted to
resemble that of a rarer and more valuable kind.
The seats of chairs were frequently of leather, painted with flowers
and fancy devices; of interlaced work made of string or thongs,
carefully and neatly arranged, which, like our Indian cane chairs,
were particularly adapted for a hot climate; but over this they
occasionally placed a leather cushion, painted in the manner already
mentioned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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