119. Rock-cut Lycian Tomb. (From Sir Charles Fellows’s work.)
120. Rock-cut Lycian Tomb. (From Texier’s ‘Asie Mineure.’)
When these forms are repeated in the rock the stylobate is omitted, and only the upper part represented, as shown in the annexed woodcut (No. [118]).
When the curvilinear roof is omitted, a flat one is substituted, nearly similar to those common in the country at the present day, consisting of beams of unsquared timber, laid side by side as close as they can be laid, and over this a mass of concrete or clay, sufficiently thick to prevent the rain from penetrating through. Sometimes this is surmounted by a low pediment, and sometimes the lower framing also stands out from the rock, so as to give the entrance of the tomb something of a porchlike form. Both these forms are illustrated in the two woodcuts (Nos. [119] and [120]), and numerous varieties of them are shown in the works of Sir Charles Fellows and others, all containing the same elements, and betraying most distinctly the wooden origin from which they were derived.
121. Ionic Lycian Tomb. (From Texier’s ‘Asie Mineure.’)
The last form that these buildings took was in the substitution of an Ionic façade for these carpentry forms: this was not done apparently at once, for, though the Ionic form was evidently borrowed from the neighbouring Greek cities, it was only adopted by degrees, and even then betrayed more strongly the wooden forms from which its entablature was derived than is usually found in other or more purely Grecian examples. As soon as it had fairly gained a footing, the wooden style was abandoned, and a masonry one substituted in its stead. The whole change took place in this country probably within a century; but this is not a fair test of the time such a process usually takes, as here it was evidently done under foreign influence and with the spur given by the example of a stone-building people. We have no knowledge of how long it took in Egypt to effect the transformation. In India, where the form and construction of the older Buddhist temples resemble so singularly these examples in Lycia, the process can be traced through five or six centuries; and in Persia it took perhaps nearly as long to convert the wooden designs of the Assyrians into even the imperfect stone architecture of the Achæmenians. Even in their best and most perfect buildings, however, much remained to be done before the carpentry types were fairly got rid of and the style became entitled to rank among the masonic arts of the world.
The remaining ancient buildings of Asia Minor were all built by the Greeks and Romans, each in their own style, so that their classification and description belong properly to the chapters treating of the architectural history of those nations, from which they cannot properly be separated, although it is at the same time undoubtedly true that the purely European forms of the art were considerably modified by the influence on them of local Asiatic forms and feelings. The Ionic order, for instance, which arose in the Grecian colonies on the coast, is only the native style of this country Doricised, if the expression may be used. In other words, the local method of building had become so modified and altered by the Greeks in adapting it to the Doric, which had become the typical style with them, as to cause the loss of almost all its original Asiatic forms. It thus became essentially a stone architecture with external columns, instead of a style indulging only in wooden pillars, and those used internally, as there is every reason to suppose was the earlier form of the art. The Ionic style, thus composed of two elements, took the arrangement of the temples from the Doric, and their details from the Asiatic original. The Roman temples, on the contrary, which have been erected in this part of the world, in their columns and other details exactly follow the buildings at Rome itself: while, as in the instances above quoted of Jerusalem, Palmyra, Kangovar, and others, the essential forms and arrangements are all local and Asiatic. The former are Greek temples with Asiatic details, the latter Asiatic temples with only Roman masonic forms. The Greeks, in fact, were colonists, the Romans only conquerors; and hence the striking difference in the style of Asiatic art executed under their respective influence. We shall have frequent occasion in the sequel to refer to this difference.