THE full dress of the earliest Sumerians comprised nothing more elaborate than a skirt fastened round the waist and probably made of wool. But the taste for decoration shown by all primitive peoples is evinced by the Sumerians at a very early date, and they seek to relieve the dead monotony of the skirt by edging the bottom with a fringe (cf. Figs. [25], [52]), the fringe on the earliest monuments being formed by a series of pointed tags. In the time of Ur-Ninâ, the archaically fringed skirt has given place to an elaborately flounced and pleated skirt—at least in the case of kings and magnates (cf. Figs. [26], [27]), but the upper part of the body was left entirely bare; people of particularly high rank are however sometimes seen wearing a skirt with an upper part attached, which covered the left shoulder as is the case with the leader of the procession on Ur-Ninâ’s tablet (cf. Fig. [26]), though it is noticeable that Ur-Ninâ himself here has no clothing on the upper part of his body. Later on the king of Lagash still wears the flounced skirt, but has another garment over it: this upper garment was also apparently made of wool, and passed over the left shoulder and under the right arm (cf. Pl. [XII]); as this is, however, a battle scene, the upper garment may be part of the king’s military insignia. This custom of leaving the right arm and shoulder free obtained right down to the time of Gudea (cf. Pl. [XXIII]) and Khammurabi (cf. Pl. [XIV]).
The heads of the majority of the figures on the early sculptures are hairless and beardless, though as we have seen (cf. p. [183]) long hair and a pronounced beard were not infrequently worn, the hair on the head—possibly a wig—sometimes being allowed to hang down the neck (cf. Fig. [25], B, C), sometimes being gathered up behind and secured by a fillet (cf. Pl. [XII]). This seems to have been done by the king when on active service, doubtless with a view to making his helmet more comfortable and secure. As nearly all these early figures are without hats or head-gear of any kind, we are almost entirely in ignorance as to the nature of their head-coverings—if, indeed, they had any. Sometimes feathers were worn (cf. Fig. [25], A), while a figure resembling Gilgamesh on one of the most ancient Sumerian bas-reliefs (cf. Découvertes, Pl. I, 1) in existence, has a flat head-gear of indeterminate character, the deity on the same archaic sculpture wearing what appears to be an early form of the horned head-dress of the gods in later times.
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, [XXXIII], [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]).
Of the dress of the women in the days of Gudea we have a good illustration in Pl. [XXIII]. She wears a gracefully fringed mantle, which was apparently[161] first pressed over the breasts and carried under the arms, after which it was crossed at the back, the two ends being brought over the shoulders and made to hang symmetrically in front.
The grave-deposits have afforded abundant evidence of the extensive use of jewellery even in the earliest Sumerian times, thus at Fâra necklaces of amethyst, coral, lapis lazuli, mother of pearl and agate were found, while other early sites yield similar testimony.
For information regarding the military accoutrements of the early Sumerians we are mainly dependent on the bas-reliefs of the period, of which the Vulture Stele is the most important. The long lance or spear, which was apparently grasped by both hands (cf. Pl. [XII]), was clearly the principal weapon of offence, while the axe, the dart, a club or mace, a curved weapon—generally hitherto regarded as a throwing-stick or boomerang—and a lance were also in use. Very few Sumerian weapons have been brought to light, but in addition to those enumerated in the chapter on Metals, mention may be made of an archaic axe-head made of agate, now in the American Museum of Natural History;[162] the characters with which it is inscribed are somewhat more wedge-shaped than those found on the monuments of Gudea, and it may accordingly be assigned to a rather later date. Another axe-head, also made of agate, and inscribed with early line characters, is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York,[163] while a number of baked clay balls and some small stone eggs, as well as copper arrows, spears, axes and stone clubs were discovered in the pre-Sargonic strata at Nippur. The discovery of arrows belonging to such an early date is of considerable interest, as it has been contended that the bow and arrow were introduced by the Semites chiefly owing to the fact that it has been thought that these weapons were not represented in early Sumerian art. But a very early example of the bow in Babylonian art is afforded by an archaic shell cylinder-seal published by Ward.[164] The human beings and gods on this seal are clad in the Sumerian short skirt and not in the Semitic plaid, while the occurrence of a bison on the top of a mountain, an animal which is only represented on very early seals, further argues the antiquity of the cylinder-seal in question, and therefore of the use of the bow and arrow depicted upon it. The discovery of clay balls and stone missiles similarly appear to afford evidence of the use of the sling at a very much earlier period than was hitherto supposed.