There is no evidence in Chaldæan art of the feeling for proportion which distinguishes Egyptian sculpture. Its renderings of the human figure are nearly always too short and thickset; even those works which by their general facility and justness of movement most strongly attract our admiration, are not free from this fault. Its effects may be estimated very clearly from the stele representing Marduk-idin-akhi, a king of Babylon (Fig. 43), whose date is placed in about the twelfth century B.C. It is true that the defect in question is more conspicuous in this relief than, perhaps, in any other work of the school to which we can point; but in all it is more or less perceptible. In Assyria, under the later Sargonids, sculptors made an effort to correct it, but even their comparatively slender figures have a certain heaviness. Assyrian sculpture has many good points, but it is never elegant. The Assyrian and Chaldæan sculptors were discouraged from acquiring a complete knowledge of the human form by the fact that it was not demanded by their patrons. The public who judged their works did not perceive their shortcomings in that respect. There was nothing in their daily life, or in the requirements they laboured to fulfil, which either assisted them to make good their deficiencies, or compelled them to do it for themselves. They seldom beheld the nude form, still more seldom did they have to introduce it into their works. The Greek writers speak of it as a peculiarity of “the barbarians,” whether Syrians or Chaldæans, Lydians or Persians, that they were ashamed to be seen naked, the men as much as the women. Such a scruple, especially in the male, would seem hardly comprehensible to the Greek accustomed to the nudity of the gymnasium.[106]
The origin of such a notion is to be sought, perhaps, so far as Mesopotamia is concerned, in a wise hygiene and in the rapid changes of an uncertain climate. The difference between the extremes of summer and winter temperature is far greater than in Egypt or on the Ionian coasts, and precautions had to be taken at one time against a scorching sun, at another against the cold of the nights. However this may have been, it is certain that these people, although they lived in a hot country, went about in a costume that covered their bodies as completely as that of modern Europe. It consisted of a long tunic, a tunica talaria (?) as the Romans would call it, and a mantle. The tunic left nothing exposed but the head and neck, the forearms, and the feet and ankles. It must have been of linen or hempen cloth;[107] when worn by a rich man it was embroidered and decorated about the foot with a sort of gimp fringe. The tunics of the poor were short and plain, often coming hardly lower than the knee. They were also looser and better fitted to work in; but they are never wanting altogether, even to the men of the corvée, the slaves and prisoners of war whom we see employed in the construction of the royal buildings (Vol. I. Figs. 151 and 152). Women were dressed in chemises coming down to their feet (Vol. I. Fig. 30), resembling the long robe of coarse blue cotton which still forms the only garment of the peasant women of Egypt and Syria. Sometimes we find a sort of cape thrown over the tunic (Vol. I. Fig. 31, and below, Fig. 44).
Fig. 43.—Merodach or Marduk-idin-akhi. From a basalt stele in the British Museum. Height 24 inches. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.
As for the mantle, it was a fringed shawl, and, like the Greek peplos or the Roman toga, could be arranged in many different ways. In the painting at Beni-Hassan which shows us the arrival in Egypt of a band of Asiatic emigrants,[108] it leaves one shoulder and both arms uncovered, and forms a kind of frock round the body, which it entirely conceals. In the old Chaldæan statues from Sirtella the arrangement is more graceful (see Plate VI.); the piece of cloth is folded double and carried obliquely round the body so as to cover the left arm and shoulder and leave the right bare. The end is simply passed under the first fold, by which it is tightly held.[109] There is no trace of a tunic. In Assyria the mantle was variously arranged. It always left one shoulder free, which was covered, however, by the tunic. As a rule it reached to the feet (Vol. I. Fig. 22), but sometimes it was so contrived as to leave one leg exposed from the knee downwards. The robes of Sargon praying before the sacred tree are thus arranged (Fig. 45).
Fig. 44.—Captives on the march. From the palace of Sennacherib.
As for the women’s dress, it was still more impenetrable than that of the men. In the Assyrian bas-reliefs there are very few figures of women on any considerable scale. We can hardly point to an instance, except in the slab where Assurbanipal and his queen are shown feasting in a garden (Vol. I. Fig. 28). In this carved picture the queen is robed in a tunic and mantle, over which the embroiderers needle has thrown a profusion of those rosettes that are so popular in Mesopotamia!! art. We are allowed to glean no hint of the personal charms of the favoured sultana, who must have been young and beautiful. They are entirely masked by the envelope in which she is wrapped.
In all this we are far enough from the semi-nudity of the Egyptian sculptures, to say nothing of the frank display of the Greeks. On the banks of the Nile, where the climate had no violent changes and the air was deliciously dry and limpid, both poor and rich, both the king and his subjects, were contented with the white drawers, which were carefully plaited and knotted about the hips. On great occasions, when, as we should say, they wished to dress themselves, they put on long, bright-coloured, and elegantly embroidered robes; but those robes were of a fine linen tissue, every contour of the body could be easily followed through them, the age and character of every form could be distinctly appreciated.
The artist, even when he had to represent the wives and daughters of Pharaoh or the most august of the female deities, showed under their draperies the contours of their breasts, their hips, and the insertions of their limbs.[110] Still more transparent were the robes in which the dancing and singing women who occur so often in the tomb pictures were draped.[111] The calculated indiscretions of this sort of coa vestis invited the painter and sculptor to do justice to the elegance of the female form.