The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2: Assyria: The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.Rawlinson, George
History
The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2: Assyria: The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.
The Assyrians also resembled the Greeks and Romans in introducing
flowers into their feasts. We have no evidence that they wore garlands,
or crowned themselves with chaplets of flowers, or scattered roses over
their rooms; but still they appreciated the delightful adornment which
flowers furnish. In the long train of attendance represented at Koyunjik
as bringing the materials of a banquet into the palace of the king, a
considerable number bear vases of flowers. [PLATE CXXXVIII., Fig. 3.]
These were probably placed on stands, like those which are often seen
supporting jars, and dispersed about the apartment in which the feast
was held, but not put upon the tables.
We have no knowledge of the ordinary houses of the Assyrians other than
that which we derive from the single representation which the sculptures
furnish of a village certainly Assyrian. It appears from this specimen
that the houses were small, isolated from one another, and either
flat-roofed, or else covered in with a dome or a high cone. They had no
windows, but must have been lighted from the top, where, in some of the
roofs, an aperture is discernible. The doorway was generally placed
towards one end of the house; it was sometimes arched, but more often
square-headed.
The doors in Assyrian houses were either single, as commonly with
ourselves, or folding (_fores_ or _valvoe_), as with the Greeks and
Romans, and with the modern French and Italians. Folding-doors were the
most common in palaces. They were not hung upon hinges, like modern
doors, but, like those of the classical nations, turned upon pivots. At
Khorsabad the pavement slabs in the doorways showed everywhere the holes
in which these pivots had worked, while in no instance did the wall at
the side present any trace of the insertion of a hinge. Hinges, however,
in the proper sense of the term, were not unknown to the Assyrians; for
two massive bronze sockets found at Nimrud, which weighed more than six
pounds each, and had a diameter of about five inches, must have been
designed to receive the hinges of a door or gate, hung exactly as gates
are now hung among ourselves. [PLATE CXXXVIII., Fig. 4.] The
folding-doors were fastened by bolts, which were shot into the pavement
at the point where the two doors met; but in the case of single doors a
lock seems to have been used, which was placed about four feet from the
ground, and projected from the door itself, so that a recess had to be
made in the wall behind the door to receive the lock when the door stood
open. The bolt of the lock was of an oblong square shape and was shot
into the wall against which the door closed.
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