In 1866, for example, one woman visiting a harem ridiculed earlier accounts, saying that the women, far from being beauties, were "fat and globular" and "old hags".
Elizabeth travels to the Middle East to visit a pasha's harem and voyeuristically enjoy its lascivious activities.
Chocolate was the love tonic of Montezuma who drank some fifty cups daily, before visiting his harem of six hundred women.
Cocoa was the "love tonic" of Montezuma II, who is reputed to have drunk some 50 cups daily before visiting his harem of 600 women.
What is less known is the key role that his beautiful, vivacious and extremely wealthy wife, Mary Nisbet, played in befriending the court of the Turkish Sultan, who, in an unprecedented breach of protocol, invited her on numerous occasions to his palace, introduced her to his mother, and even allowed her to visit his harem.
The disconnect between Western perception and Eastern reality was exemplified by reactions to the 1860 oil painting, "Visit, Harem Interior," by Henriette Brown.
All too soon, however, she contracted measles from a child in a harem where she stopped to visit, and then a bad case of dysentery, and finally had to be airlifted to the nearest British hospital, in Aden.
I have a harem at the Tate.
The Erechtheion had been a harem, the Parthenon a mosque.
But there are a lot more women in a harem.
