104 RUINED CASTLES IN ASIA MINOR. 
call to prayer resounds from every minaret, and the ex- 
cessively religious spend a few moments in the form of 
worship, but it is to be feared that their devotions are in- 
terrupted by thoughts of the savory dish into which 
their less devout companions have already plunged their 
impatient fingers. 
At various points in and about this castle scraps of 
Greek inscriptions have been found, and one or two of 
considerable importance are cut into the face of the 
rock, but they are much defaced and serve little purpose 
but to excite the students’ curiosity. Perhaps the most 
striking relics of antiquity in connection with this place 
are the very remarkable rock-cut tombs in the face of the 
bluff. The amount of labor expended on these is almost 
beyond computation! The rock isa hard limestone, and 
the means employed, so far as we can know, were sim- 
ply the pick and the chisel, and yet they have carved 
out marvelous results. About two hundred feet up the 
smooth face of the rock there is a series of excavations 
which it is not easy to describe. Not content with hol- 
lowing out a great chamber and then ornamenting the 
front with columns, arches, etc., they have carried a 
broad gallery, the entire height of the tomb, all the way 
around and behindit, and a similar separating space over- 
head. Thus cutting out a huge cubical block some sixty 
feet high, and square, and separating it entirely from 
the great mass of rock, inside of which it still stands. 
Three or four such excavations, differing somewhat in 
dimensions and workmanship, but similar in general de- 
sign, are connected together by a shelf or gallery cut 
right in the face of the rock, some twelve feet wide and 
ten feet high, with a iow wall of the native rock left 
standing on the outer edge. This gallery follows the 
windings of the original face of the mountain, with here 
a flight of steps, and there a tunnel though a projecting 
spur of the rock. 
