Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/325

 FUNEREAL ARCHITECTURE. 309 all did not return home ; many found it so snug that they permanently settled in Egypt, where they became dragomans, like the Greeks and Maltese at the present day. 1 The bronze statuette of Apis, in the Boulak Museum, 2 with a bilingual in- scription on its base (in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Carian letters), is not the only instance which testifies to the part the Carians played in Egypt ; even without the great authority of Herodotus, the notes they have left behind them would have led us to guess as much. Thus, from Ipsamboul to Memphis, their names are incised on the rocks of the Nile valley and the walls of temples, side by side with those of Greek or Syrian adventurers and Punic traders. Professor Sayce has collected and transcribed fifty Carian graffiti, and fresh researches cannot but add to the number. Of these, forty or thereabouts were discovered at Abydos. If the language and writing of the Carians have left most traces in the Nile valley, monuments, architectural and artistic, which may be ascribed to this people, have not been found outside Caria. Do all such monuments lead back to the period of the independence of Caria ? Did they witness the rise and fall of the Mermnada^, the conquest of the Persians ? We do not care to commit ourselves to a decided opinion ; besides, it matters little. The inscriptions seen about the principal sanctuaries tell us plainly how faithful were the Carians to their gods and local cults, even in the full swing of Roman dominion ; hence we cannot admit that change of masters induced them easily to change their methods, whether in their constructions, mode of burial, vase types, jewellery, and so forth, with which they had long been familiar. All the monuments, therefore, encountered on native soil, wherein Grecian style and Grecian taste are non-apparent, may be con- sidered as Carian. FUNEREAL ARCHITECTURE. Those tombs which in the time of Strabo were pointed out as being due to the Leleges, have seemingly been identified by modern travellers on different points of the Carian coast. A few, simple in construction, belong to the neighbourhood of lasus. They are chambers built of schistose blocks set up exactly as they 1 Herodotus, ii. 154. (SAYCE, The Karian Language, pp. 15, 35).
 * The Egyptian text reads thus : " To the life-giving Apis, Pram interpreter "