Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/238

 222 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. various names and occupied the whole of the north-west corner of the peninsula. Of all these nations, the Phrygian would appear to have been the first to reach a state of cohesion and a certain politico-religious importance. Hence, in the absence of positive data respecting the primitive history of these populations, it seems natural to connect the people who first set the example of so burying their dead in Asia Minor, who furnished the model of monuments such as the famous tombs at Mycenae, with a Phrygian stock. It may be objected that the funereal architecture of the Phrygians of the Sangarius (who, in virtue of the witness borne by history and that of the inscription, alone deserve the name) is imbued with characteristics other than those that appear on the southern slopes of Sipylus in the Tantaleis necropolis, where rock-hewn vaults are the rule and tumuli the exception. The objection was disposed of when we defined the nature of the rock, which every- where around Nacoleia is even with the surface ; but wherever it could be readily worked, it was simpler to excavate tombs than to undertake the long arduous process of building a somewhat com- plicated vault. Do not we find hypogeia in those parts of Sipylus where soft calcareous formations rather than hard trachytic rocks obtain ? The nature of the soil and a settled condition of life may have brought about rapid changes in the habits of the people under consideration. In a minute study such as this, it was impossible to avoid taking up conjectures one by one as they presented themselves. Towards the twelfth century B.C., perhaps even earlier, Thracian clans began to appear in Asia Minor, where they would seem to have taken advantage of the clear space left by the great migratory movement, which we find recorded in Egyptian documents ; when, like bees, part of the native population swarmed and dispersed themselves along the coasts of the Mediterranean. Ere long the Phrygians, one of these tribes, founded, within the region comprised between the Hermus gulf and the mouth of the river of the same name, a state that owed much of its prosperity to the strong position it had secured for itself, along with the rudiments of civil life its inhabitants had learnt in their intercourse with the cultured people of the central plateau. These still continued to send their merchandise to those seaports they had formerly visited as con- querors. On a coast where natural harbours alternate with pro-