Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/92

 76 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. to be antique, 1 but the fireplaces cut in the living rock must be old Phrygian work, A. It certainly is an interesting and somewhat rare phenomenon to find the mingling of the two styles of architecture thus employed simultaneously, the principle of which is so widely different ; the one using none but combustible materials, the other taking advantage of every salience in the earth's crust to excavate abodes for the dead and the living as well. The subterraneous house, as a rule, is only resorted to in localities where timber fails altogether, as in Egypt, but in especial in that Lycia whose sylvan scenes we shall ere long have occasion to visit, 2 where, too, the co-existence of the two modes led to curious results. In order to invest the fa9ades of the hypogeia with monumental aspect, pieces of carpentry, mouldings akin to those cut in a wooden post, have been copied in stone. Shapes, therefore, which in the wooden house were organic members and formed an integral part of the construction, have been endowed with a purely decorative value. Nor are these the only items which have thus been turned from their natural use ; yet other instances of similar transpositions and adaptations are met with in this rock-cut architecture. From work done in the loom or with the needle, the Phrygian orna- mentist likewise borrowed the designs which served to fill the field of his frontispieces so as to ensure variety of aspect. The district in which occur the monuments whose main characteristics we have broadly sketched occupies but a narrow strip in Kiepert's excellent map. Eastward it follows the edge of a wooded tract, with Koutahia on the west, Seid el-Ghazi on the north, and Eski Hissar on the south. It corresponds to the ancient territory of two Phrygian towns of a certain importance, Nacoleia and Prymnessus, and is quite close to the first. We do not hear of Meros (which will be found near Kumbet on the map) until the time of the Eastern empire ; in the reign of Justinian it was a large borough with a bishopric. When we wrote our History of Art, no map of the canton had been published ; hence it was no easy matter to get a clear notion of the relative situation of the monuments from the verbal description of travellers. Pro- fessor Ramsay was good enough to place at my service drawings 1 The miserable ornament and modern woodwork about the chimney was accepted as old by the German traveller EARTH (Reise von Trapezunt, etc., p. 95). 8 Hist, of Art, torn. i. pp. 507-516 ; torn. v. book ix.