11. Every day Mordecai took a walk in front of the harem’s courtyard to learn how Esther was doing and to see what was happening to her.
12. During the year before each young woman’s turn to go to King Ahasuerus, the harem regulation required her to receive beauty treatments with oil of myrrh for six months and then with perfumes and cosmetics for another six months.
13. When the young woman would go to the king, she was given whatever she requested to take with her from the harem to the palace.
14. She would go in the evening, and in the morning she would return to a second harem under the supervision of Shaashgaz, the king’s eunuch in charge of the concubines. She never went to the king again, unless he desired her and summoned her by name.