[Illustration: Fig. 50.--Plan of the palace of Sargon (after Place, pl. 7).] the traces of which Sir A. H. Layard recognised. As at Tello, a gentle ascent on an inclined plane was formed for the passage of vehicles. The royal apartments built upon the terrace comprised no less than two hundred and nine more or less spacious rooms, the walls of which, laid bare by Botta and Place, are still sometimes twenty-six feet high and always reach at least ten feet in the parts most demolished. It was not easy to determine the destination of these different halls. However, by comparison with the [Illustration: Fig. 51.--South-eastern façade of the palace of Sargon (restoration by Place, pl. 20).] present Turkish and Persian palaces, in which an analogous arrangement has been perpetuated, with the same usages, the following parts have been distinguished at Dur-Sarrukin as in the palace of Tello: the _seraglio_, that is to say, the reception-rooms and the dwelling-rooms of the prince and the men attached to his person; the _hareem_, or apartments of the women and their children; the _khan_, or the residence of the slaves, the kitchens, the stables, and the offices. The _seraglio_, the most luxurious and most highly decorated part, included ten courts and more than sixty rooms, adorned with those bas-reliefs in stone which are now the glory of the Louvre. They were paved with square bricks fixed in bitumen. Where the ground was not to be covered with carpet, as before the door, there was a stone pavement in which the designs, skilfully carved in relief, imitated those of the carpets themselves. To the buildings of the seraglio, situated on the north-east, is attached the staged tower of which we shall speak farther on. The principal court of the seraglio had an area of 3,202 square feet, and eight doors formed a means of communication between it and the rooms of this part of the palace; most of these openings are flanked with colossal lions or bulls supporting the feet of semicircular arches. The _hareem_, which occupied, on the south, a surface of more than 94,726 square feet, formed a group of structures communicating with the rest of the palace by two doors only. It was, with its lofty blind walls, a sort of prison in the very bosom of the fortress. Within, there were several courts and isolated suites of rooms, in which the apartments of the women were separately arranged. The walls of the principal court must have been decorated with true Asiatic luxury, for the foot of these walls, when they were laid bare about fifty years ago, was still covered with a lining of enamelled bricks representing animals and mythological scenes. It was here that the shaft of a column was found, of wood covered with a bronze sheath, so that it is not rash to affirm that this court was furnished with a portico all round, and perhaps even with an upper story with open sides. The _khan_, situated towards the eastern angle of the structure, occupied an even larger