Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/61

Rh to apply to the Porte for a Firman to enable me to make excavations, his influence should be exerted to the utmost in my behalf.

Among the letters of introduction which I took out from England, was one to Dr. Mordtmann, the Charge d'Aflaires of the Hanseatic towns, and one of the few learned men at present resident at Constantinople. He is well acquainted with Turkish and Greek, and has devoted much time to the study of coins of the Sassanid dynasty, of which he has a large collection. He is at present engaged in preparing a work on the ancient monuments of Constantinople, for the illustration of which so little has been done since the time of Banduri.

I rode with him round the walls of the city, which seem much in the state in which they were during the Byzantine empire. Built into the masonry are many Greek inscriptions, which Dr. Mordtmann copies with great care. Mounting on a high tower, we had a fine bird's-eye view of Stamboul, and I was surprised to see how large a portion of the space enclosed within the ancient walls is devoted to gardens. During the earlier period of the Byzantine empire, the population was far more densely crowded than at present, as appears from a passage in the historian Zosimus,14 who flourished in the latter part of the 5th century. We learn from an edict of the Emperor Zeno, that about this time it was customary to build very lofty houses, with projecting loggie, or balconies, and terraces on the roofs; while in the public porticos and squares the spaces between the columns were everywhere encroached upon by shops