04-05-2013, 12:36 PM
This is the relevant passage from Layard's excavation report of Nineveh:
The Arabs employed in removing the rubbish from the chamber with the kneeling winged figures, discovered a quantity of iron, in which I soon recognized the scales of the armour represented on the sculptures. These scales were from two to three inches in length, rounded at one end, and square at the other, with a raised or embossed line in the centre, and had probably been fastened to a vest of linen or felt.*
This armour is scale, not lamellar. If the construction was lamellar, the plates would not need to have been attached to "a vest of linen or felt". FWIW Layard called it "mail", not scale or lamellar. Writers in that period referred to ALL metal armour as "mail".
* Austen Henry Layard, A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh, (New York: J. C. Derby, 1854). 221
The Arabs employed in removing the rubbish from the chamber with the kneeling winged figures, discovered a quantity of iron, in which I soon recognized the scales of the armour represented on the sculptures. These scales were from two to three inches in length, rounded at one end, and square at the other, with a raised or embossed line in the centre, and had probably been fastened to a vest of linen or felt.*
This armour is scale, not lamellar. If the construction was lamellar, the plates would not need to have been attached to "a vest of linen or felt". FWIW Layard called it "mail", not scale or lamellar. Writers in that period referred to ALL metal armour as "mail".
* Austen Henry Layard, A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh, (New York: J. C. Derby, 1854). 221
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen & Sword Books
