Body Armour.—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 Cyrenman or African legend, and the pretended red goat-skin may be supposed to have been that of a species of gnu (Catoblepas 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 sight 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 national form was a kind of thorax, tippet, ;Inv shiryon, or square, with an opening in it for the head, the four points covering the breast, back, and both upper arms. This kind in particular was affected by the royal band of relatives who surrounded the Pharaoh, were his subordinate commanders, 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 a red-coloured cloth or stuff. On the oldest fictile vases a shoulder-piece likewise occurs, worn by Greek and Etruscan warriors. It covers the upper edge of the body armour, 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 Menelaus discovering Helen in the sack of Troy. Millin, Mon. ineilits.) This piece of armour 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 mosaic or fresco on the walls of the cathedral of Ravenna, dating from the times of Justinian. The late Roman legionaries, as published by Du Choul, again wear the tippet armour, 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 century.
By their use of metal for defensive armour, 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 ; nevertheless, in the tombs of the kings near 'Thebes, a tigulated hauberk is represented, com posed of small three-coloured pieces of metal ; one golden, the others reddish and green. It is this suit which Denon represents as composed of rings set on edge ; but they are all parallelograms, with the lower edge forming the segment of a circle, and each piece, beside the fastening, has a button and a verticle slit above it, giving flexibility by means of the button of each square working in the aperture of the piece beneath it. This kind of laps the abdomen. The -ferm tst.ptvp kaskasim, 'scales,' in the case of Goliath's armour, denotes the squamous kind, most likely that in which the pieces were sewed upon a cloth, and not hinged to each other, as in the tachera. It was the defensive armour of Northern and Eastern nations, the 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 separately upon cloth, anterior to the sculpture at Takt-i Boostan, or the close of the Parthian era. The
existence of mail is often incorrectly inferred from our translators using the word wherever flexible armour is to be mentioned. The techera could not well be worn without an under-garment of some density to resist the friction of metal ; and this may have been a kind of sagum, the shereyon of the Hebrews, under another form—the dress Saul put upon David before he assumed the breast plate and girdle. The Roman sagum offers a parallel instance. Under that name it was worn at first it foricd, then beneath it, and at last again without, but the stuff itself made into a kind of felt.
The Cuirass and Corselet, strictly speaking, were of prepared leather (corium), but often also com posed of quilted cloths : the former in ancient armour may be meant by the word rnrin Latham, the closest interpretation of which appears to be ligulatio, a tiling. The expression in 2 Chron. xviii. 33, may be that Ahab was struck in one of the grooves or slits in the squares of his techera, or between two of them where they do not overlap ; or perhaps, with more probability, between the metal hoops of the trunk of the shereyon before mentioned, where the thorax over times generally denoted a suit with leathern ap pendages at the bottom and at the shoulder, as used by the Romans; the latter, one in which the barrel did not come down below the hips, and usually destitute of leathern vitt, which was nationally Greek. In later ages it always designates a breast and back piece of steel. It is, however, requisite to observe, that in estimating the meaning of Hebrew names for armour of all kinds, they are liable to the same laxity of use which all other languages have manifested; for in military matters, more perhaps than in any other, a name once adopted remains the same, though the object may be changed by successive modifications, till there remains but little resemblance to that to which the designation was originally applied. The objects above denominated appendages and vittw (in the feudal ages, lambrequins), were straps of leather secured to the lower rim of the barrel of a suit of armour, and to the openings for armholes: the first were about three and a half inches in width ; the second, two and a half. They were ornamented with embroidery, covered with rich stuffs and gold smiths' work, and made heavy at the lower ex tremity, to cause them always to hang down in proper order ; but those on the arm-holes had a slight connection, so as to keep them equal when the arm was lifted. These vittw were rarely in a single row, but in general formed two or three rows, alternately covering the opening between those underneath, and then protecting the thighs nearly to the knee, and half the upper arm. In the Roman service, under the suit of armour, was the sagum, made of red serge or baize, coming down to the cap of the knee and folding of the arm, so that the vitte hung entirely upon it. Other nations had always an equivalent to this, but not equally long ; and in the opinion of some, the Hebrew shiryon served the same purpose.