Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/38

20 A History of Art i Chald.-ea and Assyria. figure as being comparatively near the truth. Travellers who visited Constantinople in the days of the Solimans and Amurats, tell us that the walls of the old seraglio eave shelter to thousands in' individuals who were fed from the kitchens of the sultan. Before quitting this part of the palace we must point out several other buildings that belong to it both by position and character. In the first place, our readers will see that the northern angle is occupied by a group of chambers abutting on one corner of the seraglio but not communicating directly with it. This group, opens on the state quadrangle and upon the external platform. " This building was decorated in the most splendid fashion. It contained eight vast halls and a few smaller chambers. It was like a second seraglio attached to the first and rivalling it in magnificence. What could have been its destination ? We can hardly answer that question with certainty, but we may hazard the suggestion that, in the lifetime of Sargon, his son Sennacherib was already a great personage and must have had his own* particular palace, or suite of apartments, in the house of the king, his father." l In the western angle of the platform stands the isolated and irretrievably ruinous building taken by Botta for a temple, and restored by Thomas as a throne room. 2 In either case it played its part in the official and public life of the king. We may say the same of the building near the centre of the south-western face of the mound, in which we have recognized a temple, although we have not scrupled to make use of the title given to it by M. Place. The chief sanctuary of the town that lay so far below its summit, it must have been the scene after each campaign, of the royal homage to Assur ; the observatory of the astrologers, it must have had constant and intimate relations with the palace, where the bulletins issued from it must have been awaited with anxiety whenever the propitious moment for any great enterprise was sought. At the southern angle of the seraglio and to the south-east of the Observatory, there is an almost completely separate building. Its isolation, the few points of access and the way they are arranged, the style of its decorations, their richness, and the disposition of its chambers, all combine to suggest that this part 1 Lfnormant, Manuel d y Histoire ancienne, vol. ii. p. 197. 2 See Vol. I. page 392.