Fig. 51.—South-eastern façade of the palace of Sargon (restoration by Place, pl. 20).
present Turkish and Persian palaces, in which an analogous arrangement has been perpetuated, with the same usages, the following parts have been distinguished at Dur-Sarrukin as in the palace of Tello: the seraglio, that is to say, the reception-rooms and the dwelling-rooms of the prince and the men attached to his person; the hareem, or apartments of the women and their children; the khan, or the residence of the slaves, the kitchens, the stables, and the offices. The seraglio, the most luxurious and most highly decorated part, included ten courts and more than sixty rooms, adorned with those bas-reliefs in stone which are now the glory of the Louvre. They were paved with square bricks fixed in bitumen. Where the ground was not to be covered with carpet, as before the door, there was a stone pavement in which the designs, skilfully carved in relief, imitated those of the carpets themselves. To the buildings of the seraglio, situated on the north-east, is attached the staged tower of which we shall speak farther on. The principal court of the seraglio had an area of 3,202 square feet, and eight doors formed a means of communication between it and the rooms of this part of the palace; most of these openings are flanked with colossal lions or bulls supporting the feet of semicircular arches. The hareem, which occupied, on the south, a surface of more than 94,726 square feet, formed a group of structures communicating with the rest of the palace by two doors only. It was, with its lofty blind walls, a sort of prison in the very bosom of the fortress. Within, there were several courts and isolated suites of rooms, in which the apartments of the women were separately arranged. The walls of the principal court must have been decorated with true Asiatic luxury, for the foot of these walls, when they were laid bare about fifty years ago, was still covered with a lining of enamelled bricks representing animals and mythological scenes. It was here that the shaft of a column was found, of wood covered with a bronze sheath, so that it is not rash to affirm that this court was furnished with a portico all round, and perhaps even with an upper story with open sides. The khan, situated towards the eastern angle of the structure, occupied an even larger space than the hareem; the treasury or bit kutalli, the cellars, granaries, and storehouse of domestic utensils, have been distinctly recognized, as well as magazines of objects of all sorts, carried off as plunder by Sargon in his expeditions, and weapons of the chase and of war: in the very stables, the presence of iron rings fixed in the wall has been ascertained, to which horses and camels were attached: lastly, the small but numerous rooms of the servants and slaves have been excavated. Ctesias brings the number of persons attached to the service of the palace of the
Fig. 52.—Bird’s-eye view of the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad (restoration by Place, pl. 18 bis).
kings of Persia up to fifteen thousand: it may easily be supposed that an equal number of hands was employed at the court of the haughty king of Nineveh.