Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/135

 FUNEREAL ARCHITECTURE. 119 the heavy frame of the roof. Some have thought that this was a stick with a Phrygian cap ; l but nothing proves that the cap in question, which only crops up on very late monuments, was at that time the national head-dress of this district of Asia Minor ; and, what is more, will any one explain its meaning on the top of a pole, and its business about a tomb ? On the other hand, we can easily account for the part played here by the phallus, as well as the significance that may have been attached thereto. Did we not observe it in Cappadocia, as centre-piece of an aediculum, a place usually reserved to the deity ? 2 Was it not put on the summit of tumuli in the neighbouring necropolis of Smyrna ? 3 As to the conventional form it has assumed here, it may be explained on utilitarian principles, in that the artisan could fashion in no time, and at small expenditure of labour, those cippi in stone or wood that were so important a feature of the naturalistic religion of Syria. The frequent parallelism Hebrew writers establish between Asherahs, sacred poles, and Ashtoreths or Astartes, goddesses of love and life-giving, led us to suspect that cippi found in such abundance in Phoenicia and in her dependencies had a phallic meaning.* The sample we reproduced from Kition 5 is precisely similar to that which served as model to the Phrygian sculptor ; a symbol he again figured in the Yapuldak tomb, which likewise belongs to this necropolis, and which, from an artistic standpoint, is in advance of the Pishmish Kalessi example (Fig. 75). 6 In each case plinth, quadrangular cube, and pyra- midion are identical ; making up a type which from Southern Syria must have passed to the H ittites worshippers of Ashtoreth, and spread from the valley of the Orontes and Cilicia to Cappa- docia and throughout Asia Minor. Hence it came to be regarded as an indispensable adjunct in the public worship of the various nations, whose religion was based on the great concept of an eternal and never-ceasing creative force, and a deep sense of the homage it should receive. This is the type we are inclined to recognize 1 This was the opinion of the late Mordtmann, the companion of Earth (Reise von Trapezunf nach Scutari, p. 93). 2 Hist, of Art, torn, iv., pp. 646, 653, Fig. 321. 8 Ibid., torn. v. p. 51, Figs. 18, 19. 4 Ibid., torn. iii. p. 385. 5 Ibid., torn. iv. Fig. 203. 6 Stewart, Plate XV.; EARTH, Reise, p. 93; RAMSAY, Journal of Hellenic Studies, torn. iii. pp. 256, 257, Plate XXVIII. n. 4.