tion was undertaken at two different times say, at an interval of a hundred years? There is no need for such an hypothesis. The monument, with its more complicated arrangement than any other exemplar of the Phrygian necropolis, is the outcome of a single effort, and the apparent anomaly is readily explained. As the lions were mere decorative figures, the work of carving them was left to craftsmen who repeated a traditional type, numerous instances of which already existed in the necropolis. This does not apply to the bas-relief in the cemetery, which is unique of its kind. The man for whom it was carved, a petty local prince under the jurisdiction of the Persian satrap of Daskylion, wished to have something out of the common, when he ordered the image of genii, guardians of the tomb, to be set at the entrance of the burial place which was to receive his mortal remains. To this end he called in a sculptor whose training had brought him in touch with the Greek world of the Ionian coast, where art was even then making such prodigious strides towards perfection.
The Broken Tomb, then, belongs to the opening of the second period of the development of Phrygian art. General arrangement and selection of forms, the whole architectural scheme, still bears the stamp of early habits and local taste, whilst the ornament is entirely borrowed from that old repertory of devices and symbols which had satisfied older generations. But in the frontispiece of the funereal chamber we have a sculptured page dictated by a new spirit, written by a different hand.
The same analytical test, applied to the neighbouring hypogeia, would result in the same remarks; we should see that the primitive forms and national subjects have undergone gradual modification by contact with Hellenic art; and, as in the Kumbet tomb (Fig. 84), the theme is still thoroughly Asiatic, thoroughly Phrygian if preferred, whilst the manipulation of bas-reliefs and mouldings testifies to a more refined and elegant taste.
The Kumbet exemplar, therefore, cannot be carried back beyond the end of the fifth century, and may, after all, date from the fourth century B.C.[1] Ancient traditions, whether of general
- ↑ Hirschfeld (Paphlagonische Felsengræber, p. 41) does not consider the tomb older than the fourth century. He compares it with the Lycian tomb at Myra (published by Téxier, Description, tom. iii. Plate CCXXV.), in which the subject—the deadly conflict between two animals (a lion and a bull)—is strictly Oriental, whilst the architectural types belong to the Ionic order, of universal usage in the peninsula during the two last centuries of the pagan era.
