1 62 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. abound in Syria, the Sinaitic peninsula, and Egypt was much in vogue during the first centuries which witnessed the triumph of Christianity. 1 Will it be inferred that in these two words we have the signature of the nameless workman who cut, as with a knife, this citadel in the living rock ? It is too late in the day to be required to give proofs that work of this kind was in the habits of the older inhabitants of the peninsula, the people who started its civilization. Later on, in certain parts of this same region, subterraneous chambers, which men of old had hollowed by thousands in the flank of the mountains, continued to be utilized as tombs, sometimes as domestic and religious abodes ; such processes resulting from the inexperience of the constructer were discarded, but little was added to the legacy of the past. They knew how to build with stone and brick, with or without cement. When an elevated site was to be fortified, it was found easier to plant a wall on the rock, and raise covers behind it, than laboriously to cut rampart and sub- ordinate defensive works in the mass of the cliff. It was certainly not the Byzantines, in perpetual dread of fresh invasions from without, who could have attempted so laborious a mode of construction. The one thing required was the greatest amount of labour in the shortest possible time. Hence the archi- tects of Justinian made a lavish use of mortar when they repaired or rebuilt fortresses, the long list of which is pompously set forth by Procopius. We aj;e inclined to see here a hasty restoration, dating from the first incursions of the barbarians, when above the large blocks with which the lower portion of the walls at the north-west angle are built, there followed a chain of bricks and smaller stones ill put together. The beams in this section of the wall are in good preservation, and are enough to prove their comparatively modern date. In those troublous times, when the emperors of Constantinople fought for the possession of Asia Minor against Arab captains and Turkish emirs by turn, the citadel must have been repeatedly attacked and repaired. Earth thought to recognize, in places, the masonry of the Seljou- kides. 3 The inscription, at any rate, is contemporaneous with the first restoration of the fortress, which had been abandoned and suffered 1 G. PERROT, Explor. Arche., p. 145, n. i.
- EARTH, Reise von Trapezunt, p. 91.
