Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/494

478 478 BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. rABT II. CHAPTER VI. ROCK-CUT CHURCHES. CONTENTS. Churches at Tchekerman, Inkerman, and Sebastopol and Vardzie. • Excavations at Kieghart INTERMEDIATE between the Armenian province which has just been described and the Russian, which comes next in the series, lies a territory of more than usual interest to the archaeologist, though hardly demanding more than a passing notice in a work devoted to architecture. In the neighborhood of Kertch, which was originally colonized by a people of Grecian or Pelasgic origin, are found numerous tumuli and sepulcln-es belonging generally to the best age of Greek art, but which, barring some slight local ])eculiarities, would hardly seem out of place in the cemeteries of Etruria or Crete. At a later age it was from the shores of the Palus Moeotis and the Caucasus that tradition makes Woden migrate to Scandinavia, bearing with him that form of Buddhism^ which down to the 11th century remained the religion of the North — while, as if to mark the presence of some strange jieople in the land, we find everywhere rock-cut excavations of a character, to say the least of it, very unusual in the West. These have not yet been examined with the care necessary to enable us to speak very positively regarding them;2 but, from what we do know, it seems that they were not in any instance tombs, like those in Italy and many of those in Africa or Syria. Nor can we positively assei't that any of them were viharas or monasteries like most of those in India. Generally they seem to have been ordinary dwellings, but in some instances appropriated by the Christians and formed into churches. One, apparently, of the oldest, is a rectangular excavation at Tchekerman in the Crimea. It is 37 ft. in length by 21 in width, 1 Even if it should be asserted that this is no proof that the inliabitants of these countries were Buddhists in those days, it seems tolerably certain that they were tree-worshippers, which is veiy nearly the same thing. Procopius tells us that "even in his day these bar- barians worshipped forests and groves, and in their barbarous simplicity placed the trees among their gods." ("De Bello Gotico," Bonn, 1833, ii. 471.) - The principal part of the informa- tion regarding these excavations is to be found in the work of Dubois de Mont- pereux, passim.