Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/389

Rh cantons is the fact that from it was derived the form of the Lycian sarcophagus (Fig. 267). Some two thousand of these sarcophagi, of which the short side reproduces the front of a house, have been encountered in Lycia, and in Lycia only. They consist of a very ponderous movable lid, furnished with saliences

which served as handles, and a vat into which were put the bodies of the family one after another; whilst underneath is often found a kind of vault or hyposorion, in which the servitors found their last rest. These funerary monuments are sometimes built ; sometimes both vat and base supporting it are cut in some rocky mass.

This is not the place to describe the varieties offered by sarcophagi of this kind. The example we have adduced suffices to show that the creations of Lycian architecture, one and all, even those in which one would least expect it, were influenced by and derived from timber constructions. So far we have given a summary of the architectural shapes distinctly peculiar to Lycia ; it remains to note a monument which does not seem to come under that denomination, and which is known as the Tomb of the Harpies, from the figured bas-reliefs that decorated it, now in the British Museum. The removal of the sculptured slabs that formed the sides of the chambers is the cause of its present disfigured and mutilated aspect.

It is a type made up of a square mass, tower-shaped, in which the mortuary chamber is perched under a flat and very salient roof, which expands into a dais-like shape. To give the reader a good idea of this kind of tower, we will reproduce a specimen from the Xanthus Acropolis, which has not been ravaged (Fig. 268).