Ancient Assyrian law already policed who could wear a veil
Veils cover head, face, or sacred objects across European, Asian, and African histories. Elite Mesopotamian, Macedonian, and Persian women wore them as respectability markers. A Middle Assyrian law code offers the earliest clear written reference, while Mycenaean Linear B may name headband makers around 1300 BC.
Veiling has taken prominent forms in Judaism, Christianity and Islam and is mostly associated with women and holy objects, though some cultures expect men to veil instead. The Middle Assyrian code, dated between 1400 and 1100 BC, set out by class, rank and occupation which women had to cover and which were barred from doing so. Married women and widows walking the main streets were to keep their heads covered, while prostitutes and enslaved women caught veiled faced beatings, mutilation or hot pitch, and a man who let a veiled prostitute go could himself be flogged.
Such rules separated respectable women from those considered publicly available. In classical Greece, roughly 550 to 323 BC, respectable women were expected to stay secluded and dress so strangers could not see them. The Greek word for veil, kalyptra, comes from a verb meaning to cover, and statues sometimes show both head and face hidden, which Caroline Galt and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones take as evidence that higher-status women commonly covered up in public.
In Rome the veil signalled a husband's authority. A matron who went out bareheaded was seen as stepping back from her marriage, and in 166 BC the consul Sulpicius Gallus divorced his wife for leaving the house uncovered. Unmarried girls usually went without, while married women veiled to display pudicitia, their modesty and chastity; the cloth was also thought to ward off the evil eye.
The bride's flame-yellow flammeum echoed the veil of the Flaminica Dialis, the priestess of Jupiter's cult who could never divorce, so it promised lifelong fidelity. Romans even tied nubere, to marry, to nubes, a cloud. Weddings keep the veil alive in secular settings today.
Source: Veil
