Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/37

 The Palace oe Sargon. 19 themselves, their lower par ts were cased with bas-reliefs coloured in sober tints. It is quite possible that this court, was used for ceremonial purposes, as it could be easily protected from the sun by stretching between the summits of its walls, those rich stuffs the Babylonians knew so well how to weave. By covering the ground with carpets a saloon would be formed in which large numbers of people could be brought together, and one whose noble decorations would be in complete harmony with the stateliest pageants. We cannot attempt to describe the seven great chambers that surrounded the courtyard. They were all decorated with sculp- tured slabs and enamelled brick ; the doors that led from one to the other were flanked by colossi. At one point (looking towards the court marked L) the spectator could look down a vista of no less than eight of these arched and decorated doorways. All these large rooms opening from a single court made up a combination in which everything was calculated for show. Their size alone made such rooms uninhabitable, and, as life has every- where much the same requirements, M. Place found to the south of these state apartments a collection of smaller and less richly ornamented chambers in which the king could sleep, eat, and receive in private audience, and in which the officers of his chancellery and his personal attendants could be lodged within easy call. These are the rooms about the courts marked M, M', N, O, P in our plan. They contain a few sculptures. The walls as a rule are coated with a coloured stucco, and sometimes decorated with fresco paintings. There are in all forty-nine of these rooms, covering, with their courts, about 6.000 square yards. A short study of the plan is enough to make its presiding idea clear to us. " Each court, taken by itself and with the chambers radiating from it, forms a distinct group of apartments com- municating with other groups only on one side and often only by a single door." l Each of these groups must have afforded lodgings for the personnel of one department of the king's household. Ctesias says that fifteen thousand officers and domestics found board and lodging in the palace of the King of Persia, and although he may be here guilty, as in so many other instances, of some exaggeration, we are willing to accept this 1 Place, JVmwe, vol. i. p. 57.