Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/147

FUNEREAL ARCHITECTURE. plan. What tends to confirm our hypothesis is the inscription, in large letters, engraved over the doorway by which the second chamber is entered (Fig. 89). It reads as follows : 6OAHN KG 6N0A 26w iccp](Tat) cvOa. 1 The shape of the characters, as well as the contractions, prove their late origin, and may be dated from the Roman dominion, in the third or second century of our era. Its in- terest resides in the fact that it testifies to a habit with which numerous instances have made us familiar. In the last centuries of antiquity, it often happened that, to save themselves the trouble of hollowing a fresh tomb in the depth of the rock, they took possession of those the men of old had prepared for themselves, when, no doubt, the first to be usurped were the most ancient. The more recent were guarded FIG. 8 9 7-Kumbet tomb, either by the surviving members of the p^eviT' Explor " families who had consecrated them, or, at least, by the stringency of the laws which the Treasury, interested in the matter, had enacted for the purpose. No such obstacles were to be apprehended in the earlier monuments, in which were buried the nameless sons of a forgotten race, whose pinch of ashes had been scattered to the four winds of heaven, and which, moreover, had long since been desecrated and rifled. Thus, under the golden rule of the Antonines, one Solon, a native magnate, found it con- venient to appropriate to himself a tomb of a certain repute. Then it was that the second chamber was added, with the inscription giving the name of the owner. As to the opening in the farthest wall of this chamber, we found it choked up by potsherds and stones ; so that we failed to make out whether it was coeval with the monu- ment, or whether it had been pierced through the thin rocky wall by the Agha, to enable his servants to enter the vault, used as lumber-room, through the courtyard. Externally we found no trace of stucco ; but in the hollows, notably about the palmettes at the sides, are still patches of vivid red. Internally, a rude gorge, ornamented by vertical stripes of 1 With regard to the restitution of the above text, see PERROT, Explor. Arche., p. 140.