Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/159

 RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE. The stony mass terminates in an oblong plateau dipping southward, where may be traced surfaces levelled out with care, stairways, altars, a variety of symbols, inscriptions, rock-cut walls, perhaps the back walls of houses leaning against the cliff. 1 The esplanade was formerly surrounded by a built wall, the blocks of which have almost all disappeared ; but the marks left in the tufa by the lower units may still be traced. This fortified level is what M. Ramsay has called the " Midas town." It was reached by a path, like- FIG. 101. Rock-cut altar and bas-relief. Journal, Plate XXI. wise rock-cut, which took its start about two hundred metres south of the Midas rock, and ascended in a gentle curve from the valley, having on the right a vertical wall of rock, on which a series of eight figures in flat relief have been carved, as if to represent a procession descending from the heights towards the valley 1 I and M. Guillaume did not visit this plateau; hence our map (Fig. 100) contains but a general outline of the northern portion of the cliff. The account which follows is borrowed from M. Ramsay, to whom redounds the honour of having discovered this group of monuments (Hellenic Studies, vol. iii. pp. 6-17, and 41-44, under the title: "Studies in Asia Minor"). But he made no plan of the unit, and did not attempt to give a methodical and complete description of it. His information respecting it has to be gleaned and sought out in various papers.