The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.99

v1.c10.99

The argument would apply with equal force to the sculptures of the ancient Egyptians. The paintings and painted bas-reliefs of those people unmistakably show that the higher classes among them were well and sumptuously clothed from the neck to the ankles, and yet their statues and unpainted sculptures entirely belie this. Kings, queens, high priests, and persons of rank appear in them with scarce anything better than rags to hide their nudity, and in many instances even those rags are wanting. The colossal statue of Minerva and that of king Asymandias at Thebes, have nothing more than each a strip of cloth from the hip to the middle of the thighs by way of dress.⁶² The transparent clothing noticed by Mr. Fergusson at Sāñci, which hides no part of the female form, occurs almost everywhere in Egypt, and in some of her most finished carvings. Among the bas-reliefs under the gallery of the western temple in the Island of Philae, in the sanctuary of the temple of Hermonthis and elsewhere, there are several figures of goddesses, or ladies of rank, seated on chairs, and decorated with rich head-dresses and ornaments in profusion round the neck, but totally devoid of clothing round the waist. The attendants and the priests before them are all decently draped.⁶³ It would be as reasonable to argue from them that the ancient Egyptians were ill-clad, as to deduce from the Sāñci bas-reliefs that the Hindus therein represented, were a naked race. It is true, as justly observed by Carlyle in his *Sartor Resartus* that “by nature man is a *naked animal*, and only in certain circumstances by purpose and device masks himself in clothes”. It may be true, likewise, as the same author endeavours to show, that “the first purpose of clothes was not warmth or decency, but ornament;⁶⁴ and taking it in that light, it must follow that for decoration man must have clothes, and when he has once got it, his passion for ornament will alone suffice to make him retain it, despite even the “philosophical nakedness” of Shelley's friends,⁶⁵ or that of Carlyle which resulted in pictures of “a naked duke addressing a naked House of Lords, naked kings wrestling with naked women”, and other vagaries of fancy.⁶⁶