Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/180

 164 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. stages on those heights. 1 The Midas level is on too small a scale to have been the site of a city properly so called ; but the tribal chiefs may very well have had a temporary abode here, which they inhabited for a few weeks two or three times a year, when the ceremonies connected with these sanctuaries took place amidst the assembled multitudes gathered around them. It is not to be supposed that the place was left to itself; there always was a nucleus of stationary people care-takers entrusted with the trea- sures of the chieftains, priests who watched over royal and private tombs, or sacred rocks bearing the names of ancestral deities, altars and specs in honour of Cybele. Future explorers cannot well devote too much attention to this tiny spot, which seems to have been the official centre, the chief place of a canton where the Phrygian race has left in greater abundance than anywhere else the monuments of its cults, lan- guage, and individual culture. They should bring back with them exact tracings of all the curious dispositions the rock has preserved to this day. Such documents, if they ever come to hand, will be of inestimable value to the historian. SCULPTURE. We have now gone over all the monuments of any importance in this district, and the reader cannot have failed to notice the insignificant space given to sculpture. This is everywhere in flat relief; nor is there aught to be compared to the extensive figured processions which cover the rocks of Pterium. 2 With the exception of a ram above life size, there is not a single statue, great or small. This particular ram was discovered lying on its side, half embedded in the earth, among Turkish graves near the village of Kumbet 3 With the help of some villagers, MM. Wilson and Ramsay succeeded in setting him " on his tail," for the nature of the ground and the thickly interspersed gravestones, says the latter, precluded his being set on his feet. It is a rectangular block of stone, I m. 44 c. long by 76 c. high, and 35 c. thick. Except the head, which comes out beyond the block, the relief of the general outline and the legs is indicated by a shallow groove on the side of the slab, after the manner of Pterian sculptures at Boghaz Keui and Eyuk, for 1 RAMSAY, Hellenic Studies, torn. iii. p. 6. 2 Hist, of Art, torn. iv. vi. ch. iii. 4 ; ch. iv. 2. 8 RAMSAY, Studies, pp. 25, 26.