What would Queen Esther's clothing (or that of period Persian royalty in general) have actually looked like?

by scalfin

Purim's coming up, and I've noticed that a lot of the Esther costumes being worn are Disney Princess dresses. This of course got me wondering what an "authentic" Esther costume would have looked like. As I don't have the best imagination, images (or even rough sketches) would be especially appreciated.

cnzmur

Encyclopaedia Iranica has an interesting article on women in pre-islamic Persia, with a fairly long section on the Achaemenid period including two pictures, and one on clothing that has some information on women's clothing (including some actual examples, though they are from a pretty distant part of the empire, and likely represent Scythian, rather than Persian fashions). [This](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atusa_(Daughter_Of_Cyrus_The_Great).jpg) is a bust of the daughter of Cyrus the Great, and presumably a good source for the headdress of an elite Persian woman. Most of the pictures on this page are considerably later than the period you're looking for, but there's one Achaemenid-period seal with a picture of a dancer on it, who's interestingly wearing trousers (I assume the figure's female, given the context). Poor-quality pictures, but there are also two images online of a goddess on a lion being worshipped.