The disposition of the royal apartments showed a striking analogy with that which we shall meet with again later in the palaces of Nineveh; there were the convenience and comfort which we find in the palaces of modern oriental sovereigns. To the Chaldæans again we must give the credit of having invented that architectural arrangement which springs from the necessities of oriental life, and is so well fitted to its needs that for four thousand years it has never varied. There were in the palace of Gudea three interior courts (A, B, C, fig. 2), round each of which the rooms radiated, and from which they received air and light. Each of these three groups had its own entrance, and communicated with the next group only by a single passage easy to guard or to close. The group of chambers situated in the northern angle (C) was especially isolated and removed from the others; it was the hareem or women’s apartments. At the eastern angle (B) were the rooms composing the seraglio or _selamlik_--that is to say, the part of the palace inhabited by the king and his officers; there was the saloon for official receptions, of which we have given the dimensions. This part of the royal dwelling communicated on one side with a state courtyard, measuring 55 ft. 8 in. by 68 ft. 9 in., and on the other with the outside by means of a smaller room serving as an antechamber; beside the door opening on the façade, boxes or recesses had been arranged in which the guards were posted. The third group of chambers, on the south-east (A), formed the _Khan_--that is to say, the dependencies of the palace, the kitchens, the slaves’ lodgings, and the stables. All the rooms were paved with bricks; they very rarely led into one another, and had an opening looking on to the court. The largest of the doorways, that which opened into the state saloon, was of the unusual breadth of 6 ft. 6 in.; it was probably a folding door. Under each of the principal doors there was a great threshold of marble or alabaster, sometimes covered with an inscription and placed on a bed of bitumen and crushed bricks; under this concrete, finally, cylinders of precious stone and talismanic amulets were generally found.