Note 118 — Chapter VI · HOME LIFE OF THE OSMANLIS IN ANATOLIA

For an illuminating account of an Assyrian harem in the time of Sargon, more than seven centuries B. C., see Histoire de l’Art dans Antiquité, Tom. II, p. 435, et. seq. (by G. Perrot and Chipiez, Paris 1884). See also the account of the prehistoric palace of the Kings of Tiryns, as given in Schliemann’s Tiryns, p. 239, et. seq. (New York, 1885). According to Dr. Dörpfeld and other eminent archæologists this palace, the oldest in Greece, is distinctly oriental in plan and its smaller megaron was obviously a harem. Cf. also Schuchardt’s Schliemann’s Excavations, p. 31. For interesting descriptions of visits to harems in Turkey and Syria, consult the Bosphorus and the Danube, p. 125, et seq. (by Julia Pardoe, London, 1839), and the Inner Life of Syria, Chap. XI (by Lady Isabel Burton, London, 1884). Both of these women during their sojourn in the East, had exceptional opportunities for studying the real life of the harem where they were always cordially welcomed by its inmates.

The custom of wearing the veil, it may here be remarked, dates back almost as far, if not fully as far, as the harem. Cf. Genesis, xxii:65, and Isaiah, iii:23. Nor is the wearing of the veil in the Orient to-day confined entirely to Moslem women. Christian and other non-Moslem women wear it and have worn it from time immemorial. How erroneous, therefore, is the statement, so often made, that it was Mohammed that imposed the veil on the women of the Orient and inhumanly incarcerated them in the harem!