116. Rock-cut Frontispiece at Doganlu. (From Texier’s ‘Asie Mineure.’)
There are other rock-cut sculptures farther east, at Pterium and elsewhere; but all these are figure sculptures, without architectural form or details, and therefore hardly coming within the limits of this work.
The only remaining important architectural group in Asia Minor is that of Lycia, made known in this country since the year 1838, by the investigations of Sir Charles Fellows and others. Interesting though they certainly are, they are extremely disheartening to any one looking for earlier remains in this land,—inasmuch as all of them, and more especially the older ones, indicate distinctly a wooden origin—more strongly perhaps than any architectural remains in the Western world. The oldest of them cannot well be carried farther back than the Persian conquest of Cyrus and Harpagus. In other words, it seems perfectly evident that up to that period the Lycians used only wood for their buildings, and that it was only at that time, and probably from the Greeks or Egyptians, that they, like the Persians themselves, first learnt to substitute for their frail and perishable structures others of a more durable material.
117. Lycian Tomb. (From British Museum.)
As already observed, the same process can be traced in Egypt in the earliest ages. In Central Asia the change was effected by the Persians. In India between the 2nd and 3rd centuries B.C. In Greece—in what was not borrowed from the Egyptians—the change took place a little earlier than in Lycia, or say in the 7th century B.C. What is important to observe here is that, wherever the process can be detected, it is in vain to look for earlier buildings. It is only in the infancy of stone architecture that men adhere to wooden forms; and as soon as habit gives them familiarity with the new material they abandon the incongruities of the style, and we lose all trace of the original form, which never reappears at an after age.
All the original buildings of Lycia are tombs or monumental erections of some kind, and generally may be classed under two heads, those having curvilinear and those having rectilinear roofs, of both which classes examples are found structural—or standing alone—as well as rock-cut. The woodcut (No. [117]) represents a perfectly constructed tomb. It consists first of a double podium, which may have been in all cases, or at least generally, of stone. Above this is a rectangular chest or sarcophagus, certainly copied from a wooden form; all the mortises and framing, even to the pins that held them together, being literally rendered in the stonework. Above this is a curvilinear roof of pointed form, which also is in all its parts a copy of an original in wood.
The staves or bearers of the lower portion of the chest or sarcophagus would suggest that the original feature was a portable ark, the upper portion of which was framed in bamboo or some pliable wood tied together by cross timbers or purlins which are carved on the principal front. A somewhat similar scheme of construction is shown in the Chaityas of the Buddhist temples, which are supposed to have been copies of wooden structures not dissimilar to the Toda Mant huts which are built by the Hindus down to the present day.[[119]]
118. Rock-cut Lycian Tomb. (From Forbes and Spratt’s ‘Lycia.’)