Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/167

 RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE. 151 of this kind that we propose to recognize in a monument which, at first sight, the traveller who discovered it placed among funereal hypogeia. This monument unfortunately much injured is hard by the village of Liyen (Fig. 108, 13 in map) and goes by the name of Arslan Kaia (the Lion Rock). The physical formation here is a stratified tufa of varying degrees of hardness ; some layers are quite soft, and the sculpture is not protected against the weather by overhanging rocks. Arslan Kaia is cut in the face of a tall isolated rock, of sugar-loaf shape, which rises to the height of some twenty metres on a steep grassy slope. 1 The rocky mass has been chiselled on three sides, so as to pre- sent three vertical faces, looking respectively east, south, and west. The southern side is the most important. It forms a rectangular surface, in the lower part of which the door is pierced, topped by a pediment crowned by a curvilinear device, analogous to that of the Midas monument Here, however, it seems to terminate in two serpents' heads. The inner slab was formerly covered with geometric shapes, of the nature of those so well preserved at lasili Kaia meanders and crosses, but so defaced that an occa- sional fragment is all that can be made out ; so that no attempt has been made to indicate them in the annexed woodcut (Fig. 109). There is also a Phrygian inscription along the horizontal fascia that divides the triangular pediment from the rectangle or inner slab, but so hopelessly obliterated that it could not be transcribed with any hope of success, even when brought close to it by a ladder. 3 The decoration of the frontal, thanks to the salience of its sloping beams, is in a better state of preservation. It is composed of two winged sphinxes," passant and face to face, but separated by the supporting column. They are seen in pro- file, their heads turned towards the spectator, the ears large and prominent, but the features are worn quite flat. A long curl hangs down over the shoulder of each. A band of meander pattern runs along the two sloping sides of the pediment. The whole is carved in very low relief. 1 Our views of the monument have been obtained from M. Ramsay's sketches, which, he observes, " were confined to the wrought part of the stone, and that the draughtsman made them too high, causing the rock to look taller than reality" (Journal, Plate XLIV. ; ibid., 1884, p. 241).
 * Ibid., p. 243, n. 2.