DESIGN IN ENAMELLED BRICK FROM THE FAÇADE OF THE THRONE ROOM
In the drawing light and dark blue are indicated by light and heavy horizontal shading; yellow by a dotted surface.
The chambers behind the Throne Room, reached by two doorways in the back wall,[80] were evidently for the king's service, and are ranged around three open courts; and in the south-west corners of two of them, which lie immediately behind the Throne Room wall, are wells, their positions indicated on the plan by small open circles. The walls of each of these small chambers are carried down through the foundations to water-level, and the intermediate space is filled in around the wells with rubble-packing. This device was evidently adopted to secure an absolutely pure supply of water for the royal table. But the private part of the palace, occupied by the women and the rest of the royal household, was evidently further to the west, built over the earlier dwelling of Nabopolassar. It will be seen from the ground-plan that this is quite distinct from the eastern or official portion of the palace, from which it is separated by a substantial wall and passage-way running, with the Great Court, the whole width of the palace-area. The character of the gateway-building, which formed its chief entrance and opened on the Great Court, is also significant.[81] For the towers, flanking the gateways to the official courts, are here entirely absent, and the pathway passes through two successive apartments, the second smaller than the first and with a porters' service-room opening off it. The entrance for the king's own use was in the southern half of the passage-way, and lies immediately between the side entrance to the Throne Room[82] and another doorway in the passage leading to one of the small courts behind it.[83] In two of the chambers within the private palace, both opening on to Court 5, are two more circular wells, walled in for protection, and here too the foundations of each chamber are carried down to water-level and filled in with brick-rubble, as in the case of the wells behind the Throne Room.
The same care that was taken to ensure the purity of the water-supply may also be detected in the elaborate drainage-system, with which the palace was provided, with the object of carrying off the surface-water from the flat palace-roofs, the open courts, and the fortification-walls. The larger drains were roofed with corbelled courses; the smaller ones, of a simpler but quite effective construction, were formed of bricks set together in the shape of a V and closed in at the top with other bricks laid flat. The tops of the fortifications, both in the citadel itself and on the outer and inner city-wall, were drained by means of vertical shafts, or gutters, running down within the solid substructures of the towers; and in the case of crude-brick buildings these have a lining of burnt-brick. In some of the temples, which, as we shall see, were invariably built of crude brick,[84] this form of drainage was also adopted.
FIG. 11.
PLAN OF THE NORTH-EAST CORNER OF THE PALACE WITH THE VAULTED BUILDING.
A: East Court of the Palace. B: Central Court. H: Ishtar Gate. I: Vaulted Building. J: Southern fortification-wall of crude brick, probably Imgur-Bêl. h: Passage-way leading to the Vaulted Building, m, n: Entrances to the Vaulted Building. 1-15: Small open courts or light-wells in official residencies.
(After Koldewey.)