To judge of the value of these costumes, we must compare them, first, with the scanty mate rials already produced, and then with the modern costumes of Syria and Arabia. The result of this examination will probably be that these traditional garbs are by no means bad reminiscences of Ile brew costume ; and that the dresses which the painters have introduced into Scriptural subjects are far more near to correctness than it has latterly been the fashion to suppose. It is perhaps as nearly as possible a just medium between the eccle siastical tradition and the practical observation. No dress more suitable to the dignity of the sub jects could possibly be devised ; and, sanctioned as it has been by long use, and rendered venerable by Scriptural associations, we should be reluctant to see it exchanged for the existing Oriental cos tumes, which the French artists have begun to prefer. But this is only with regard. to pictorial associations and effects ; for, in an inquiry into the costume actually worn by the Israelites, modern sources of illustration must be by no means over looked. And to that source of illustration we now turn.
The value of the modern Oriental costumes for the purposes of Scriptural illustration arise from the fact that the dress, like the usages, of the people is understood to be the same, or nearly the same, which was used in very ancient times. Of the fact itself, nakedly taken, there is not the least room for doubt. But this must he under stood with some limitations. The dress of the Turks is distinctive and peculiar to themselves, and has no connection with the aboriginal cos tumes of Western Asia. The dress of the Persians has also been changed almost within the memory of man, that of the ruling Tartar tribe having been almost invariably adopted ; so that the pre sent costume is altogether different from that which is figured by Sir Thomas Herbert, Chardin, Le Bruyn, Niebuhr, and other travellers of the seven teenth and eighteenth centuries. But with the exceptions of the foreign Turkish costume, and the modifications thereof, and with certain local excep tions, chiefly in mountainous regions, it may be said that there is one prevailing costume in all the countries of Asia between the Tigris and Mediter ranean, and throughout Northern Africa, from the Nile to Morocco and the banks of the Senegal. This costume is substantially Arabian, and owes its extension to the wide conquests of the Arabians under the first caliphs ; and it is through the Arabians—the least changed of ancient nations, and almost the only one which has remained as a nation from ancient times—that the antiquity of this cos tume may be proved. This is undoubtedly the
most ancient costume of Western Asia, and while one set of proofs would carry it up to Scriptural times, another set of strong probabilities and satis factory analogies will take it back to the most re mote periods of Scriptural history, and will suggest that the dress of the Jews themselves was very similar, without being strictly identical.
It would be a pleasant task to trace out these lines of proof and analogy. This cannot here be done ; but it may be proper to remark—I. That the usages of the Arabians in Syria and Palestine are more in agreement with those of Scripture than those of any other inhabitants of those countries. 2. That their costume throws more light on the Scriptural intimations than any other now existing, while it agrees more than any other with the mate rials supplied by antiquity and by tradition. 3. That the dress which the Arabian garbs gradually superseded in Syria and Palestine was not the same as that of Scriptural times, excepting, perhaps, among the peasantry, whose dress appears to have then differed little from that of the Arabian con querors. The Jews had for above five centuries ceased to be inhabitants of Palestine ; and it is certain that during the intermediate period the dress of the upper classes—the military and the townspeople—had become assimilated to that of the Greeks of the Eastern empire. Arabia had meanwhile been subjected to no such influences, and the dress which it brought into Syria may be regarded as a restoration of the more ancient cos tume, rather than (as it was in many countries) the introduction of one previously unknown.
It is to be observed, however, that there arc two very different sorts of dresses among the Arabians. One is that of the Bedouin tribes, and the other that of the inhabitants of towns. The distinction between these is seldom clearly understood, or cor rectly stated ; but is of the utmost importance for the purpose of the present notice. Instead there fore of speaking of the Arabian costume as one thing, we must regard it as two things—the desert costume, and the town costume.
If, then, our views of Hebrew costume were based on the actual costume of the Arabians, we should be led to conclude that the desert costume represented that which was worn during the patri archal period, and until the Israelites had been some time settled in Canaan ; and the town cos tume that which was adopted from their neighbours when they became a settled people.