Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/283

 ARCHITECTURE. 267 traveller ignorant of the language of the country he happens to visit knows to his own cost, or his memory may have played him false, and made him confuse the said stela with the milestones of the upper platform. On the other hand, the measurements given by the historian coincide very nearly with those taken on the spot, and must of a necessity relate to the same monument. The one error in his computation is clearly due to his having mistaken the diameter for the circle, since a circle of 1172 m. would yield a diameter of 373 m., and not 403 m. If we take the 373 m., which are the real figures of Herodotus, and compare them with the 355 m. obtained by Spiegelthal for the diameter measured at the foot of the wall, we shall only find a divergence of 18 m. between the two sets of measurements. Accepting Spiegelthal's figures as final, the monument was 1115 m. round. If these dimensions be set against those of the Cheops Pyramid, they will make one realize how the Lydian monument should have reminded the historian of what he had seen in Egypt and Chaldsea. The Great Pyramid is certainly taller than the tomb of Alyattes, but its circumference is much less, being no more than 935 m. 96 c. Then, too, in its pristine state the Lydian sepulchre must have looked far more imposing than it does now, with its wall buried under rubbish, and its sides deformed by deep furrows or sinkings. The deepest of these looks towards the old capital (Fig. 157). Traces of a carriage- road have been found in the direction of the Hermus and Sardes, with which it communicated either by a bridge or a ford. It led to the necropolis, and thence to a temple of Artemis Coloae not far distant. The monument, then, considered as a whole, was not devoid of grandeur, and testified, if nothing else, to a great effort. The tomb of the warlike monarch, who had moved the frontiers of Lydia on to the banks of the Halys, was the principal ornament of a necropolis embracing sepulchres other than royal mausoleums ; since no less than a hundred distinct mounds have been made out, 1 whilst in a district where tumuli obtained, we may take it that many more have been destroyed, either by the action of water or the ploughshare. As stated above, Spiegelthal began by exploring some of the 1 The figure is that given by Spiegelthal ; Hamilton and M. Choisy say about sixty mounds.