Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/155

 FUNEREAL ARCHITECTURE. 139 than any other betrays the relationship these monuments bear to those of Cappadocia, and through these to the art of Assyria and Chaldaea, is the feeble salience of the sculptures seen on these fa9ades. The geometrical, vegetable, animal, and human shapes which adorn the doorways, tympans, and frontals of these frontis- pieces, with rare exceptions, are chiselled in flat relief and all the living forms drawn in profile. The processes by which they were obtained are precisely similar to those of the figured decorations encountered beyond the Halys, the Taurus range, and the valley of the Amanus, works which we ranged under the denomination of Hittite monuments. Among all these fa9ades, that in which the highest and boldest relief was attained by the Phrygian sculptor is the Kumbet tomb (Fig. 84). The heads of the lions and the vase stand out from the field with a relief of thirteen centimetres and seven centimetres respectively. This furnishes us with a first token that the monument is younger than many others in these necropoles ; its outward appearance, however, is not as thoroughly Greek as Gherdek Kaiasi, for instance ; it still belongs to the transition period, and must be ascribed to native art. The themes treated by the sculptor are those selected in preference by the Syro-Cappadocian ornamentist. Such would be eagles and lions figured in pairs face to face, a phallus, a tree, vase, or candelabrum interposing between them, and likewise encountered on many a point of Phrygia. This same subject (animals in pairs) appears on the cylinders and sculptures of Mesopotamia, as also in Cappa- docia ; whilst Phrygian tombs are witnesses to the special favour it enjoyed with the indigenous artificers, whether on the threshold or above the entrance to their hypogees. But if the data are very primitive and archaic, the technique denotes a more advanced stage and a later date. Compare the Kumbet lions with the Kalaba example 1 also due perhaps to Phrygian activity and those of Figs. 64, 65, met with in the necropolis under considera- tion, and you will perceive at a glance the wide-reaching distance which divides them. When the artist set about chiselling the Kumbet animals in the rocky mass, he had freed himself from the conventionalism resorted to by his predecessors for indicating the hair, the muscles of the fore-leg and the shoulders. This is very visible in the model- 1 Hist, of Art, torn. iv. p. 713, Fig. 350.