the use of cosmetics for the
eyes and cheeks. In spite of distance, the modes of Babylon reigned
supreme. The Syrians would have continued to expose their right shoulder
to the weather as long as it pleased the people of the Lower Euphrates
to do the same; but as soon as the fashion changed in the latter region,
and it became customary to cover the shoulder, and to wrap the upper
part of the person in two or three thicknesses of heavy wool, they at
once accommodated themselves to the new mode, although it served to
restrain the free motion of the body. Among the upper classes, at least,
domestic arrangements were modelled upon the fashions observed in the
palaces of the nobles of Car-chemish or Assur: the same articles of
toilet, the same ranks of servants and scribes, the same luxurious
habits, and the same use of perfumes were to be found among both.*

* An example of the fashion of leaving the shoulder bare is
found even in the XXth dynasty. The Tel el-Amarna tablets
prove that, as far as the scribes were concerned, the
customs and training of Syria and Chaldaea were identical.
The Syrian princes are there represented as employing the
cuneiform character in their correspondence, being
accompanied by scribes brought up after the Chaldaean manner.
We shall see later on that the king of the Khati, who
represented in the time of Ramses II. the type of an
accomplished Syrian, had attendants similar to those of the
Chaldaean kings.

From all that we can gather, in short, from the silence as well as from
the misunderstandings of the Egyptian chroniclers, Syria stands before
us as a fruitful and civilized country, of which one might be thankful
to be a native, in spite of continual wars and frequent revolutions.

The religion of the Syrians was subject to the same influences as their
customs; we are, as yet, far from being able to draw a complete picture
of their theology, but such knowledge as we do possess recalls the same
names and the same elements as are found in the religious systems of
Chaldaea. The myths, it is true, are still vague and misty, at least
to our modern ideas: the general characteristics of the principal
divinities alone stand out, and seem fairly well defined. As with the
other Semitic races, the deity in a general sense, the primordial type
of the godhead, was called _El_ or _Ilu_, and his feminine counterpart
_Ilat_, but we find comparatively f