Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

86 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
musicians, or attacking strong cities and castles, subduing
foreign nations, punishing rebels, and leading back thousands
of captives and innumerable spoil of every description.
The private apartments of the monarch, which were
much smaller and simpler, occupied the southeast wing,
close to the harem or women's quarter. The latter was
entirely separated from the other two sections, even its
single rooms, as the traces of discovered hinges indicate,
being closed by folding doors, while everywhere else the
entrances appear to have been covered with curtains.
The floor of the different chambers as a rule was only
stamped clay, upon which in many cases doubtless precious
rugs had been spread. Here and there it was overlaid with
tiles or marble blocks, which were especially employed for
pavements in connection with courts and open spaces around
the palace. The walls of the rooms, serving to exclude the
intense heat of the summer, and to protect against the severe
cold of the winter, were exceptionally thick. They varied
between nine feet and a half and sixteen feet, and in one
case reached the enormous thickness of even twenty-five
feet and a half. Apart from the large reception rooms and
gateways, which displayed all the splendor that Assyrian
artists
were able to give them, the inner walls were generally
covered only with a white plaster surrounded by black lines,
while the women's apartments were adorned more tastefully
with fresco paintings and white or black arabesques.
Marble
statues as a decorative element were found exclusively in
the principal court of the harem. The exterior of the palace
walls exhibited a system of groups of half-columns, separated
by dentated recesses or chasings, — the prevailing type of
ancient Babylonian external architecture, as we shall see
later.
It is impossible to enter into all the characteristic features
which this remarkable complex must have presented to
Sargon and his people, and as a careful study of the whole