Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/90

A History of Art in Chald.ea and Assyria. All this was separated by a large courtyard from the dwelling place proper, and even after the building had become a part of France, the neighbours kept up their habit of coming to sit and gossip under its dome. 1 The word porte has thus acquired a significance in every European language that could hardly be understood but for the light thrown upon it by such customs as those illustrated by the remains of Assyrian architecture, and alluded to so often in the sacred writings. Every one who has visited Stamboul, has seen in the first court of the Old Seraglio, that arched doorway {Bab- i-Houmaioun) in whose niches the heads of great criminals and rebellious vassals used once to be placed ; it formerly led to the saloons in which the Ottoman sultans presided at the great council, listened to the reports of their officers, and received foreign ambassadors. The doorway through which the august presence was reached ended by representing in the imagination of those who passed through it ; first, the whole of the building to which it belonged, and secondly, the sovereign enthroned be- hind it. The decrees in which the successors of Mohammed II. made known their will ended with these words : " Given at otir Sublime Gate, at our Gate of Happiness." In later years the Old Seraglio was abandoned. The different public departments were removed into a huge edifice more like a barracks than an eastern palace, but the established formula was retained. In the Constantinople of to-day " to go to the Porte " means to go to the government offices, and even the government itself, the sultan, that is, and his ministers, are known in all the chancelleries of Europe as the Po7'te y the Sublime Porte, the Ottoman Porte. It was, no doubt, by a metonomy of the same kind that the capital of ancient Chaldaea, the town into which the principal sanctuaries of the national gods were gathered, was called Bab -Hon, the Gate of God, which was turned by the Greeks into ValSv'kœv, or Babylon. After our careful description of the remains left by the city of Sargon we need enter into few details as to the other fortified enceintes that have been explored in Mesopotamia. The same rectangular plan, the same thick walls and carefully arranged gateways are to be found in them all. With the Assyrians as with their neighbours, every town was fortified. The square 1 Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 186.