Page 52 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

COSTUME 39

modest means, that the female figures, a wife and a daughter, carry a spindle
as a reminder of their domestic duties. Perhaps we may conclude that the
higher a family's place in the social scale the more generous its attitude to
women.

From the mosaics and, to a lesser extent, from sculpture,1 we obtain a
remarkably clear picture of women's dress at Edessa at this period of history.
The undated Family Portrait mosaic displays a family of well-to-do burghers.
In it, the adult women wear tunics heavily embroidered along the whole length
of the sleeves, and also at the front in the case of the mother of the family;
over their tunic is a long robe of a different colour secured with a brooch on
the left shoulder. Their hair is in plaits, and they have pointed slippers on
their feet. In the somewhat modest family of the Funerary Couch mosaic
(dated A.D. 278), the wife of the deceased is seated on an armchair with her
feet resting on a stool, beside her husband's couch, and has a similar, but less
ornate, costume; while her daughter's dress is still simpler. So, too, the Tri-
pod mosaic, found in the northern cemetery area outside the city—the other
two mosaics are from the southern cemetery area—shows an adult woman in
plain costume, her hair falling in long curls. Young girls, in both the Family
Portrait mosaic and the Tripod mosaic, wear no robe; their tunics are
fastened with a broad belt. All the costumes are gaily coloured. The women
wear jewellery, golden bracelets and a golden clasp to fasten the outer gar-
ment; the statues show women wearing a necklace either of tooth-shaped
beads or pieces of gold.
Most striking is the head-dress of the women of Edessa, as illustrated by
the mosaics and statues. In the Family Portrait mosaic the wealthy adult
women wear high hats, slightly tapered at the peak. The hats are of four
different coloured tiers, or, more probably, two bands of material of other
colours are wound around the middle of the hat; over this is draped the
outer robe falling on either side like a veil.2 The same head-gear appears in
other mosaics, in the full-length statue at Urfa, and in the funerary banquets
on the reliefs in stone at Urfa and Kara Koprii. In the less prosperous
family of the Tripod mosaic, however, the mother's hat is broader and less
high and has only one band. Here we may have a link with another type of
head-dress. In the stone bust found at Urfa the miniature figure of the daugh-
ter has the high hat of the mosaics. But her mother, Shalmath, perhaps more
in the current fashion, has the lower hat, with one band around it, and
draped with a cloth; it has a brooch in front. This form of head-dress
survived until modern times. In 1844 the missionary, Mr. Badger, drew at
Urfa a sketch of a woman with a hat resembling that of Shalmath, but made

1 Pis. 1-3, 166, 170, 12 a, b, 256. head-dress or 'hennin' that was the mode in
* This hat is reminiscent of the steeple Europe in the fifteenth century.

www.knanayology.org