Yoga at Sargon II’s

Yoga at Sargon II’s

I expected to cross the Cour Khorsabad without stopping (Richelieu, room 229), in search of a stairway to the first floor to go see the Duc de Choiseul’s Snuffbox. But I stopped in my tracks, paralyzed, incapable of continuing on my path. A yoga class was taking place in the Palace of Sargon II (yoga or Pilates—the distinction isn’t entirely clear to me). About twenty lithe young women—all poised on their mats like Egyptian statues; cork cushions at their sides like Mesopotamian headrests—were following the instructions of a coach who could well have been an officer to the Assyrian king himself. I crouched on the ground in the same way as them and watched them for a long time, remembering a novel of Zola’s—I no longer know which one—where a tipsy wedding party goes to the Louvre after a long luncheon and falls into raptures over the bulls of Khorsabad. A merry band of revelers and a well-behaved gymnastics class: that’s how much the Louvre has changed from one century to another.