Anatolian Civilizations and Historical Sites - TEDA

ANATOLIAN CIVILIZATIONS:10x19 antik kentler 8/1/11 10:51 AM Sayfa
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not of marriageable age. More recently scholars have preferred to see in
the winged females the other bird-women of mythology, the Sirens,
carrying the souls of the dead, in the form of children, to the Isles of the
Blessed. The seated figures are then members of the dynastic family;
formerly Hera and Aphrodite were recognized on the west side, and
Artemis with her hound on the east. All the reliefs were originally
colored, chiefly in red and blue, traces of which were visible at the time
of the discovery. On the back of the relief-slabs were painted crosses and
other symbols, suggesting that at some time the grave chamber was used
as a refuge by some Christian anchorite.
To the rear of these monuments is an agora dating from the Roman Period.
On the corner facing the tombs is a Byzantine basilica. Behind the
2 nd century AD agora at a north east angle is the famous Xanthian Obelisk.
‘Obelisk’ is not in fact a good name for it, as it is simply a pillar-tomb of
perfectly normal type. The upper type has suffered a good deal of
damage, but many of the fragments have been recovered by the
excavators; they show that the tomb possessed the usual grave chamber,
enclosed like the Harpy Tomb by slabs with reliefs showing the dead man,
surely one of the dynasts, victorious over his enemies. The topmost block
of the roof bears marks of the feet of a statue, no doubt the dynast himself.
But the fame of the monument derives from the inscription which covers
all four faces of the stone; it is the longest Lycian inscription known,
running to over 250 lines. Linguistically it falls into three parts; beginning
on the south side it continues on the east and part of the north side in the
normal Lycian language; then follows a poem of twelve lines in Greek; but
the rest of the north side and whole of the west is couched in that strange
form of Lycian which appears elsewhere only on a tomb in Antiphellos.
As was said above, the Lycian language is little understood apart from the
frequently repeated epitaph formulae; the present inscription, on the
other hand, evidently gives a narrative account of the dead hero's
exploits, and is still undeciphered. It does, however, contain a number of
recognizable proper names, from which the approximate date and some
idea of the contents may be gathered. The hero in question is called, in
the Lycian and in the Greek, son of Harpagus (not of course the Persian
general of the 6 th century); his own name is lost in both places, but he
appears to be the Xanthian dynast, known from the coins, who appears
several times elsewhere in the inscription in the Lycian form Kerei. In the
Greek epigram, he is said to have been a champion wrestler in his youth,
to have sacked many cities, slain seven Arcadian Hoplites in a day, set up