Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/94

 7 8 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. Ayazeen was discovered by Professor Ramsay, from whom we have borrowed all we have to say about the tombs it contains. If the tract rendered famous by monuments which reveal an art remarkable for originality has no geographical frontiers by which it can be easily traced on the map, the characteristics it offers are sufficiently marked and distinct to enable the observer to single it out from the adjacent country. It consists throughout of volcanic formations, more or less friable, which favour and seem to invite excavations. The works suggested by the nature of the rock, far from being everywhere uniform, exhibit wonderful variety, whence we may surmise that many generations had a hand in these hypogeia. Nevertheless resemblances between those considered old, as against the comparatively modern, are sufficiently strong to warrant the conclusion that they were the outcome of one art a national, or rather a local art which in these secluded sylvan scenes was faithful to the forms and subjects it had started with. To these it clung with characteristic tenacity for generations, defending them against the seductive style and the nobler taste of the sons of Hellas. Nor is this all ; the exceptional importance which attaches to these monuments lies in the fact that they manifest numerous instances of the use of an alphabet and idiom that have left no traces outside this region. As was suspected by travellers who first came across these lovely picturesque valleys, there is every reason for believing that such inscriptions represent the writing and the language of the Phrygians, a people who, had they not put their seal wherever their chisel was allowed to play on these rocks, would have seemed to belong to the domain of fable rather than of sober history. FUNEREAL ARCHITECTURE. "The Phrygians," wrote Nicholas of Damascus, "do not bury their priests, but set them up upon stones ten cubits high." 1 No instance has been found in Phrygia in support of this assertion. Arguing from analogy, and assuming, as we are inclined to do, identity of blood between the tribes that founded the common- wealths on Sipylus and the banks of the Sangarius, what we should expect to find here would be burial-places in the form of tumuli. The type, as a matter of fact, cannot be said to be unrepresented in Mediterranean Phrygia, where numerous remains of artificial 1 Frag. Hist. Grac., Miiller's edit, torn. iii.