Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/401

Textiles. 363 the smallest fragment of amber been discovered. If it ever entered Mesopotamia, how could it have been more fitly used than in necklaces, to the making of which glass, enamelled earthenware, and every attractive stone within reach, contributed ? T § 7. Textiles. Among people who looked upon nudity as shameful, the robe and its decorations were of no little importance. Both in Chaldaea and Assyria it was carried to a great pitch of luxury by the noble and wealthy. They were not content with fine tissues, with those delicate and snowy muslins for which the kings of Persia and their wives were, in later years, to ransack the bazaars of Babylon. 2 They required their stuffs to be embroidered with rich and graceful ornament, in which brilliant colour and elegant design should go hand in hand. 3 The Chaldaeans were the first to set this example, as we know from the most ancient cylinders, from the Tello monuments and from the stele of Merodach-idin-akhi (Fig. 233). But it would seem that the Assyrians soon left their teachers behind, and in any case the bas-reliefs enable us to become far better acquainted with the costume of the northern people than with that of their southern neighbours. Helped and tempted by the facilities of a material that offered but a very slight resistance to his chisel, the Assyrian sculptor amused himself now by producing a faithful copy of the royal robes in every detail of their patient embroidery, now by imitating in the broad thresholds, the 1 In the inventory, compiled with so much care by de Longpe'rier. of all the little objects in the Assyrian collection of the Louvre, and especially of those necklaces found by Botta in the sand under the great threshold at Khorsabad (from No. 295 to No. 380), there is not the slightest mention of amber. MM. Birch and Pinches tell me that the oriental department of their museum contains no trace of amber, with the exception of a few beads brought from Egypt, to which they have no means of assigning a date. They have never heard that any of the Mesopotamian excavations have brought the smallest vestige of this substance to light. 2 Arrian, Expedition d' Alexandre, vi. 29. 3 The reputation enjoyed by Chaldsean textiles all over western Asia is shown by a curious text in the book of Joshua (vii. 21). After the taking of Jericho, Achan, one of the Israelites, disobeyed orders and secreted a part of the spoil, consisting of two hundred shekels of silver, a wedge of gold, and " a goodly Babylonish garment."