Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/200

184 HISTORY or ART IN ANTIQUITY. racter and effect to these units, the relief of whose form is so slight, had recourse to the same expedient ? A few well-chosen pigments were all that was needed to obtain a brilliant decoration, in tones that could be seen from afar, and in imitation of a resplendent veil which the piety of a later generation had hung athwart the rock, in the depths of which reposed the venerated dead. Some thirty centuries have elapsed since then, in the course of which all that goes to make up the habits, manners and customs, the language and religion of a race, even to the inhabitants them- selves, everything has apparently changed many a time in Asia Minor. Nevertheless, the traveller is startled by resemblances as unforeseen as they are curious and frequent between the present he observes, and that past whose image he tries to reconstitute. Should his wandering steps take him northward of the Midas rock, to the little town, now the capital of the canton, in which rises the tomb where are deposited the remains of Seid el-Ghazi, the vic- torious lord, a saintly hero of Islam, he will find it hung with Turkish or Persian carpets and costly shawls, soft in texture and of brilliant colours. Precisely the same thing is seen about the vault of the mosque at Hebron, where the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are supposed to rest, but which may have been erected by the Maccabees ; and, again, about the turbehs at Broussa and Constantinople, the burial-places of the Osmanlis. The inference to be drawn from this general employment of drapery is that the Phrygians also veiled those vats or troughs and mortuary couches, found in multitudinous tombs, whose patterns were identical with those carved with so much care on the fa9ades of the monuments. Plates of metal may also have been applied to these frontispieces. We thought to recognize the marks left by them about the sealing-holes of the Delikli fagade, towards the top. 1 Should our visual observation be confirmed, it would strengthen the conjecture suggested by a text which does not seem to have been noticed before ; 2 and the question may be asked as to whether bronze figures, analogous to the one referred to above as having stood over the Midas tomb, did not adorn the summit of some of these monuments. But as with the question of the part colour played in the ornamentation, that of metal also, can only be settled by minute and thorough exploration. Should 1 PERROT and GUILLAUME, Explor. Arche., p. 112. 8 Hist, of Art, torn. v. p. 182, 183.