CHAPTER VI.
ROCK-CUT CHURCHES.
CONTENTS.
Churches at Tchekerman, Inkerman, and Sebastopol—Excavations at Kieghart and Vardzie.
Intermediate between the Armenian province which has just been described and the Russian, which comes next in the series, lies a territory of more than usual interest to the archæologist, though hardly demanding more than a passing notice in a work devoted to architecture. In the neighbourhood of Kertch, which was originally colonised by a people of Grecian or Pelasgic origin, are found numerous tumuli and sepulchres belonging generally to the best age of Greek art, but which, barring some slight local peculiarities, would hardly seem out of place in the cemeteries of Etruria or Crete.
At a later age it was from the shores of the Palus Mœotis and the Caucasus that tradition makes Woden migrate to Scandinavia, bearing with him that form of Buddhism[[251]] which down to the 11th century remained the religion of the North—while, as if to mark the presence of some strange people in the land, we find everywhere rock-cut excavations of a character, to say the least of it, very unusual in the West.
These have not yet been examined with the care necessary to enable us to speak very positively regarding them;[[252]] but, from what we do know, it seems that they were not in any instance tombs, like those in Italy and many of those in Africa or Syria. Nor can we positively assert that any of them were viharas or monasteries[[253]] like most of those in India. Generally they seem to have been ordinary dwellings, but in some instances appropriated by the Christians and formed into churches.
369. Cave of Inkerman. (From Dubois de Montpereux.)
One, apparently, of the oldest is a rectangular excavation at Tchekerman in the Crimea. It is 37 ft. in length by 21 in width, with hardly any decoration on its walls, but having in the centre a choir with four pillars on each face, which there seems no doubt was originally devoted to Christian purposes. The cross on the low screen that separates it from the nave is too deeply cut and too evidently integral to have been added. But for this it would seem to have been intended for a Buddhist vihara.
