Fig. 6.—Plan of the harem in Sargon’s palace; from Place.
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 opening 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 (Q 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. Its decorations were rich in the extreme. On at least one side the foot of the wall was decorated with a sort of mosaic of enamelled brick surmounted by groups of semi-columns (Fig. 101 and Plate XV.). The doors were flanked by statues and by tall timber shafts cased in metal, carrying on their summits tufts of palm leaves in gilded bronze, giving a free rendering of the tall stem and graceful head of the date-tree. We have restored one part of this court in perspective (Fig. 7) introducing nothing conjectural but the upper parts of the wall.[24]
In this woodcut an arrangement may be noticed (it is still more clearly shown in the plan) which is encountered nowhere else. The area of the brick-paved court was intersected by two lines of stone slabs crossing each other in the centre and standing slightly above the general level of the pavement. These paths lead to three bedrooms in three corners of the quadrangle and to a small unimportant-looking room in the fourth corner. The three bedrooms were exactly similar to each other and unlike anything to be found in the rest of the palace. They were large oblong rooms; about a third of their area was occupied by a kind of daïs twenty-four inches above the rest of the floor, and approached by five brick steps. In the centre of the end wall there was a kind of alcove, the floor of which was again four feet three inches above that of the daïs. This alcove was decorated with grooves and surmounted by an arch of enamelled brick (Fig. 90, Vol. I.). Its dimensions were nine feet wide by three feet four inches deep, or just a convenient space for a bed, which might be reached by movable steps. Thomas has not hesitated to introduce one into his restoration. The bas-reliefs furnished him with a model.[25]
Fig. 7.—Harem court in the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad; compiled from Thomas.
Observe that the courts of the harem give access to three main groups of chambers, and that those groups have no direct communication with each other. Each of the three has its own separate entrance. Observe also that the three bed chambers we have mentioned have no entrances but those from the inner court; that they are all richly decorated, and that nothing in their shape or arrangement admits of the idea that they were for the use of attendants or others in an inferior station—-oriental custom having at all times caused such persons to sleep on carpets, mats, or mattresses, spread on the paved floors at night and put away in cupboards during the day—and you will allow that the conclusion to which those who have studied the plan of Sargon’s harem have arrived, is, at least, a very probable one. Sargon had three queens, who inhabited the three suites of apartments; each had assigned to her use one of the state bedrooms we have described, but only occupied it when called upon to receive her royal spouse.[26] On other nights she slept in her own apartments among her eunuchs and female domestics. These apartments comprised a kind of large saloon open to the sky, but sheltered at one end by a semi-dome (T, X, and especially Z, where the interior is in a better state of preservation). Stretched upon the cushions with which the daïs at this end of the room was strewn, the sultana, if we may use such a term, like those of modern Turkey, could enjoy the performances of musicians, singers, and dancers, she could receive visits and kill her time in the dreamy fashion so dear to Orientals. We have already given (Vol. I. Fig. 55,) a restoration in perspective of the semi-dome which, according to Thomas, covered the further ends of these reception halls.[27]
Suppose this part of the palace restored to its original condition; it would be quite ready to receive the harem of any Persian or Turkish prince. The same precautions against escape or intrusion, the same careful isolation of rival claimants for the master’s favours, would still be taken. With its indolent and passionate inmates a jealousy that hesitates at no crime by which a rival can be removed, is common enough, and among: the numerous slaves a willing instrument for the execution of any vengeful project is easily found. The moral, like the physical conditions, have changed but little, and the oriental architect has still to adopt the precautions found necessary thirty centuries ago.