Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/41

 The Palace oe Sargon. of the palace was the royal harem. An inscription upon the threshold of one of the rooms confirms this conjecture ; it prays for the blessing of fertility upon the royal alliances. 1 In our Fig. 6 we give a large scale plan on which its arrangements may be more easily followed. The total area of the harem was about 10,912 square yards. In the walls inclosing all this space there were but two openings ; one in the south-western façade, facing the city, the other leading into the great court of the palace. The first open- ing was a narrow passage leading to a small square chamber, which must have been a eunuch's guard-room. The passage from it into the main court of the harem is at right angles with the first named passage, so that no glimpse of the inside could be caught from the external platform, or vice-versâ. The second entrance also leads to this same court (O on plan) which thus acts as a kind of vestibule to the rest of the harem. This entrance leads from the southern angle of the large court (A on first plan) into a rectangular guard-room like that already mentioned. This guard-room has four doors. One leading through a small square vestibule into the large court, two sides of which were taken up with stables, workshops, and store-rooms ; a second leading, as we have seen, into the harem court ; a third into the first of several rectangular chambers that surround this court on the south-east ; and the fourth into a kind of corridor that runs between the harem wall (U) and that of the great quadrangle, ending finally on the platform round the Observatory. By this last named entrance the king could reach his wives' apartments by a route which, though longer, was far more private than that through the great quadrangle. The passage may, perhaps, have been covered by a wooden gallery, allowing it to be used in all states of the weather. The harem had three courts, around which were distributed a number of small rooms and several large halls, destined, no doubt, for use on festive occasions. There were no bas-reliefs on the walls, which were decorated merely with a coat of white stucco crossed at the foot by a black dado thirty-two inches high. Unlike the floors of beaten earth in the seraglio, most of those in the harem were paved with bricks or stone slabs. The heart of the harem was the court marked U in our plan. 1 Oppert, Expédition scientifique, vol. ii. p. 242.