The huge dimensions of this court are to be explained, not only by the desire for imposing size, but also by the important part it played in the economy of the palace. By its means the three main divisions, the seraglio, the harem, and the khan, were put into communication with each other. When there were no particular reasons for making a détour, it was crossed by any one desiring to go from one part to another. It was a kind of general rendezvous and common passage, and its great size was no more than necessary for the convenient circulation of servants with provisions for the royal tables, of military detachments, of workmen going to their work, of the harem ladies taking the air in palanquins escorted by eunuchs, and of royal processions, in which the king himself took part. As to whether or no any part of the platform was laid out in gardens, or the courts planted with trees and flowers, we do not know. Of course the excavations would tell us nothing on that point, but evidence is not wanting that the masters for whom all this architectural splendour was created were not without a love for shady groves, and that they were fond of having trees in the neighbourhood of their dwellings. The hanging gardens of Babylon have been famous for more than twenty centuries. The bas-reliefs tell us that the Assyrians had an inclination towards the same kind of luxury. On a sculptured fragment from Kouyundjik we find a range of trees crowning a terrace supported by a row of pointed arches (Vol. I., Fig. 42); another slab, from the same palace of Sennacherib, shows us trees upheld by a colonnade (Fig. 8). If Sargon established in any part of his palace a garden like that hinted at in the sculptured scene in which Assurbanipal is shown at table with his wife (Vol. I., Fig. 27), it must have been in the north-western angle of the platform, near the temple and staged tower. In this corner of the mound there is plenty of open space, and being farther from the principal entrances of the palace, it is more quiet and retired than any other part of the royal dwelling. Here then, if anywhere, we may imagine terraces covered with vegetable earth, in which the vine, the fig, the pomegranate and the tall pyramid of the cypress, could flourish and cast their grateful shadows. The existence of such gardens is, however, so uncertain, that we have given them no place in our attempts at restoration. [Illustration: FIG. 8.--A hanging garden; from Layard.]