Oriental Armor for the Head. 1, Of Rushes; 2, Egyptian; 3, 4, Western Asia; 5, Carian? 0, T, Egyptian; S.Assyrian; 9, Greek; 10, Ionian; 11, Par- thian ; 12, 13, Other Asiatic Tribes.
Assyrian helmets, excepting that the last mentioned were of brass, though the)' still retained the low cylin- drical shape. The "313, ko'ba ("helmet"), some helmet of this kind, was worn by the trained infantry, who were spearmen among the Hebrews ; but archers and slingers had round skull-caps of skins, felts, or quilted stuffs, such as are still in use among the Arabs. The form of Greek and Roman helmets, both of leath- er and of brass, is well known ; they were most likely adopted also by the Hebrews and Egyptians during their subjection to those nations, but require no farther notice here. See Helmet.
Ancient Armor and Standards, ments. 1, '2, Cs
im the Egyptian Monu- > , -4, Egypt.
3. Body Armor. — The most ancient Persian idols are clad in shagged skins, such as the ^Egis of Jupiter and Minerva may have been, the type being taken from a Cyrenaean or African legend, and the pretended red goat-skin may be supposed to have been that of a species of gnu (Catohhpas Gorgon, Ham. Smith), an animal fabled to have killed men by its sight, and therefore answering to the condition both of a kind of goat and of producing death by the Fight alone. In Egypt cuirasses were manufactured of leather, of brass, and of a succession of iron hoops, chiefly covering the abdomen and the shoulders ; but a more ancient na- tional form was a kind of thorax, tippet, T^*"-- shir- yon' (" coat of mail," " habergeon"), or }^'~, shiryan
ARMOR
424
ARMOR
("harness," " breastplata"), or square, with an open- ing in it for the head, the four points covering the breast, back, and both upper arms. This kind in par- ticular was affected by the royal band of relatives who surrounded the Pharaoh, were his subordinate com- manders, messengers, and body-guards, bearing his standards, ensign-fans, and sun-screens, his portable throne, his bow and arrows. Beneath this square was another piece, protecting the trunk of the body, and both were in general covered with red-colored cloth or start'. ( >n the oldest fictile vases a shoulder-piece like- wise occurs, worn by Greek and Etruscan warriors. It
Ancient Coats of Mail.— 1. Egyptian tcgulateJ. 2. Sleeve of ring-mail, Ionian.
covers the upper edge of the body armor, is perforated in the middle to allow the head to pass, but hangs equal on the breast and back, square on the shoulders, and is evidently of leather. (See the figure of Mene- laua discovering Helen in the sack of Troy, Millin, Man. inedits.) This piece of armor occurs also on the shoulders of Varangi (northmen, who were the body- guards of the Greek emperors) ; but they are studded with roundels or bosses, as they appear figured in mo- saic or fresco on the walls of the cathedral of Ravenna, dating from the time of Justinian. The late Roman legionaries, as published by Du Choul, again wear the tippet armor, like that of the Egyptians, and one or other of the above forms may be found on figures of Danes in illuminated manuscripts of the eleventh cen- tury. By their use of metal for defensive armor the Carians appear to have created astonishment among the Egyptians, and therefore may be presumed to have been the first nation so protected in western Asia; ii vcrtli (less, in the tombs of the kings near Thebes, a t^gulated hauberk is represented, composed of small three-colored pieces of metal— one golden, the other reddish and green. It is this suit which Denon repre- sents as composed of rings set on edge ; but they are all parallelograms, with the lower edge forming the seg- ment of a circle, and each piece, beside the fastening, has a button and a vertical slit above it, giving flexi- bility by means of the button of each square working in the ap srture of the piece beneath it. This kind of armor may be meant by the word X^Jin, tachra' ("habergeon," only Exod. xxviii. 82 : xxxix, 23), the closest interpretation of which appears to be decussatio, tegukctio, a tiling. The expression in 2 Chron. xviii. 33, may \«< that A.hab was struck in one of the grooves or slits iii the squares of 8Uch a s/tir//nit, or betwe 'ii two
of them wher,. they do aot overlap; or perhaps, with more probability, between the metal hoops of t lie trunk of the thiryon before mentioned, where the thorax overlap, the abdomen. The tern b^Bgtop, Jfeo«jfea*- sim' (elsewhere "scales"), in the case of Goliath's ar- mor, denotes the squamous kind, most likely that in which the pieces uere sewed upon a cloth, and not hinged to each other, us iu the tachra. It was the
Ancient Parthian lloiveman.
defensive armor of Northern and Eastern nations, tho Persian Cataphracti, Parthians, and Sarmatians. But of true annular or ringed mail, Denon's figure being incorrect, we doubt if there is any positive evidence, excepting where rings were sewn separateby upon cloth, anterior to the sculpture at Takt-i-Bustan, or the close of the Parthian era. The existence of mail is often incorrectly inferred from our translators using the word wherever flexible armor is to be mentioned. The tachra could not well be worn without an un- der garment of some density to resist the friction of metal ; and this may have been a kind of sagum, the shir yon of the Hebrews, under another form — the dress Saul put upon David before he assumed the breastplate and girdle. The Roman sagum offers a parallel instance. Under that name it was worn at first a lor led, then beneath it, and at last again with- out, but the stuff itself made into a kind of felt.