We know, then, that the Babylonians had their artists and their workers in gold. Probably the gold came to them either through Egypt or across the Red Sea from Nubia and Africa farther south; Babylonia had no gold. Some, however, may have come from the East. They made ornaments of the gold and of the cut stones, and their costume would seem to have been like that of the Egyptians, but with more flowing skirts. We have seen that the Egyptians, just about the time that they began to know more of the Babylonians, that is a little before 1500 B.C., began to lengthen their skirts also. Probably the dresses of the Babylonians were more rich in ornament than the Egyptian. With both, as with the dwellers in all the warm climates of the world, there can be little doubt that the dress was a natural development from the cloth round the loins—the skirts lengthened downwards and some species of jacket drawn on over the upper part of the body. Or a long robe of light material, which I have likened to a nightgown, was put on over the shoulders and hung down to the ankles, perhaps, so that it did for both skirt and jacket in one. To this it would be very easy and natural to add a girdle or sash, to tie it in round the waist and prevent its flapping in too inconvenient a manner.
ASSYRIAN KING IN HIS ROBES.
Once you get the long robe, you come to something which would need very little change to become the sort of robe which the Greeks and Romans wore—what the Romans called the "toga." I should think these long skirts would be very much in the way when those who wore them wanted to run or make any swift movement, and I suppose that when we read in the Bible of people "girding up their loins," when they were going on any expedition, it means that they tucked up these skirts and fastened them round with the girdle about their waists, so that they should not hang around their legs.
Rise of Assyria
In order to make this story pleasant and easy reading, as it ought to be, I have said that I want to bother you about dates as little as possible, but it is necessary to take some notice of them. In the first place, for the understanding of this particular part of the great story—the part that has to do with Babylonia—you ought to know that the date at which the Assyrians, in the northeen section of the country, with their capital of Nineveh, revolted against the rule of Babylon, to which we find that they were subject when the story opens, was about 1900 B.C. That is to say, about 400 years before the great period of the Egyptian power, dating from 1500 B.C., or thereabouts. Assyria, which at first was subject to Babylon, revolted and became master of Babylon about 1900 B.C. and retained that mastery, with some ups and downs, for about 1500 years. This greatest story in the world deals with big spaces of time! Then the Assyrian power went to pieces and Babylon established itself again as the master power about the time of that Nebuchadnezzar of whom the Bible tells us.
So we have to realise that when, in 1500 B.C., or rather sooner, Egypt and Babylonia, according to the Egyptian records, began to clash against each other harder than ever before, with the result of squeezing very uncomfortably those Semitic tribes in Palestine, it was a Babylonia under the Assyrian domination. And the Assyrians were a more war-like people than the Babylonians. They had a better-ordered and doubtless a better-equipped army. Theirs seems to have been almost what we should call a military state, constituted for war, and they called themselves masters of the whole country north of the Persian Gulf and of Egypt and of all east of the Mediterranean Sea.
In the story of mankind we find it happening again and again that after a people have been comfortably settled for a while in the fertile plains and river valleys they lose the warlike habits by means of which they got possession of these good lands, and are overthrown by others coming from a more mountainous and barren country where they have been obliged to live hardier lives. Thus, these Assyrians from the north got the better of the Babylonians, and the Assyrians in their turn were constantly being troubled by the attacks of a people called the Hittites, from farther north again.
You read of the Hittites in the Bible. Not a very great deal is known about them, but it is certain that they were a great power in all that country lying north and north-west of Assyria which is now called Asia Minor. They made incursions and attacks down south, and it is probable that after their great attacks were repulsed they left some of their tribes in the south, separated from the rest of the nation. In the latter part of our story it is these scattered tribes that we hear most about.