Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/89

Towns and their Defences. 71 population at large. At Khorsabad they were constructed on exactly the same plan as those of the town ; they are even more richly decorated and the chambers they inclose are no less spacious. In them servants, guards, military officers, foreign ambassadors and wire-pullers of every kind could meet, lounge about, and await their audiences. Read the book of Esther carefully and you will find continual allusions to this custom. " In those days, while Mordecai sat in the king's gate, two of the king's chamberlains, Bigthan and Teresh, of those which kept the door, were wroth, and sought to lay hands on the king Ahasuerus." x The gates of the palace must have been open to all comers for a man of despised race and a butt for the insults of Haman, like Mordecai, to have been enabled to overhear the secret whispers of the king's chamberlains. In the sequel we find Mordecai hardly ever moving from this spot. Assis le plus souvent aux portes du palais, as Racine says, he thence addresses to Esther the advice by which she is governed. He did not stand up, as he must have done in a mere passage, for Haman complains that he did not rise and do him reverence. 2 This use of gates has not been abandoned in the East. At Mossoul, for instance, the entrances to the city are buildings with several rooms in them, and in the gate opening upon the Tigris M. Place often saw the governor of the province seated among his officers in an upper chamber and dispensing justice. 3 In the same town the doorways of a few great private houses are frequented in the same fashion by the inhabitants of the quarter. This was the case with the French Consulate, which was estab- lished in a large house that had been the ancestral home of a family of independent beys, now extinct. At the entrance there was a chamber covered with a depressed cupola and surrounded by stone benches. Right and left were four lodges for porters, and on one side a staircase leading to four upper rooms built over the vault. One of these served as a divan. 1 Esther ii. 21. 2 Esther iii. 2, 3, iv. 2, 6. 3 At Semil, to the north of Mossoul, Layard saw the Yezidi chief, " Abde Agha, seated in the gate, a vaulted entrance with deep recesses on both sides, used as places of assembly for business during the day, and as places of rest for guests during the night." — Discoveries, p. 57.