Their hair is generally arranged in the ordinary Assyrian fashion; but sometimes it is worn comparatively short, and terminates in a double row of crisp curls.  Priests have head-dresses shaped like truncated cones.  A cook in one instance, wears a cap not unlike the tiara of the monarch, except that it is plain, and is not surmounted by an apex or peak.  A harper has the head covered with a close-fitting cap, encircled with a row of large beads or pearl; from which a lappet depends behind, similarly ornamented.  A colossal figure in a doorway, apparently a man, though possibly representing a god, has the hair arranged in six monstrous curls, the lowest three resting upon the shoulder. [PLATE CXXXV., Fig. 6.]

Women of the better sort seem to have been dressed in sleeved gowns, less scanty than those of the men, and either striped or else patterned and fringed.  Outside this they sometimes wore a short cloak of the same pattern as the gown, open in front and falling over the arms, which it covered nearly to the elbows.  Their hair was either arranged over the whole of the head in short crisp curls, or carried back in waves to the ears, and then in part twisted into long pendent ringlets, in part curled, like that of the men, in three or four rows at the back of the neck. [PLATE CXXXV., Fig. 5.] A girdle was probably worn round the waist, such as we see in the representations of goddesses, while a fringed cross-belt passed diagonally across the breast, being carried under the right arm and over the left shoulder.  The feet seem to have been naked, or at best protected by a sandal.  The head was sometimes encircled with a fillet.

[Illustration:  PLATE 136]

Women thus apparelled are either represented as sitting in chairs and drinking from a shallow cup, or else as gathering grapes, which, instead of growing naturally, hang up on branches that issue from a winged circle.  The circle would seem to be emblematic of the divine power which bestows the fruits of the earth upon man. [PLATE CXXXVI., Fig. 1.]

The lower class of Assyrian women are not represented upon the sculptures.  We may perhaps presume that they did not dress very differently from the female captives so frequent on the bas-reliefs, whose ordinary costume is a short gown not covering the ankles, and an outer garment somewhat resembling the chasuble of the king.  The head of these women is often covered with a hood where the hair appears, it usually descends in a single long curl.  The feet are in every case naked.

The ornaments worn by women appear to have been nearly the same as those assumed by men.  They consisted principally of earrings, necklaces, and bracelets.  Earrings have been found in gold laid in bronze, some with and some without places for jewels.  One gold earring still held its adornment of petals.  Bracelets were sometimes of glass, and were slipped over the hand.  Necklaces seem commonly to have been of beads, strung together.  A necklace in the British Museum is composed of glass beads of a light blue color, square in shape and flat, with horizontal flutings. [PLATE CXXXVI., Fig. 2.] Glass finger-rings have also been found, which were probably worn by women.