By the Bcv. A. C. Smith. 



169 



with a flat bottom, and a raised edge or lip, evidently put there 

 as an ornament on the apex of the tumulus. Herodotus sa3 T s that 

 phalli were placed upon the summit of some of these tumuli, of 

 which this may be one ; but Mr. Strickland supposes that a rude 

 representation of the human face might be traced on its weather- 

 beaten surface. In consequence of the ground sloping to the South, 

 this tumulus appears much higher when viewed from the side of 

 Sardis than from any other. It rises at an angle of about 22°, and 

 is a conspicuous object on all sides." 1 In the interior, into which 

 M. Spiegenthal drove a tunnel, he was fortunate enough to discover 

 a sepulchral chamber, composed of large blocks of white marble, 

 highly polished, situated exactly in the centre of the tumulus : the 

 chamber was somewhat more than eleven feet long, nearly eight 

 feet broad, and seven feet high : it was empty, but the mound out- 

 side the chamber showed traces of many former excavations : it was 

 pierced with galleries, and contained a great quantity of bones, partly 

 human, partly those of animals ; also a quantity of ashes, and abun- 

 dant fragments of urns. Undoubtedly the chamber had been rifled 

 at a remote period, and the mound had been used in Post-Lydian 

 times as a place of general sepulture : hence the remains of urns, 

 and the human bones and ashes : there can be little doubt that the 

 marble chamber was the actual resting place of the Lydian King. 2 

 It is worthy of remark that the internal construction of the mound 

 was not found by M. Spiegenthal in anj 7 way to resemble that of 

 the famous tomb of Tantalus near Smyrna, explored by M. Texier. 3 

 Besides this barrow of Alyattes, there are a vast number of ancient 

 tumuli on the shores of the Gygean Lake : three or four of these, 

 scarcely inferior in size to that of Alyattes, may probably be the 

 tombs of other Lydian Kings. 4 



1 Hamilton's Asia Minor, vol. i., p. 145 — 6. 



2 Compare Rawlinson's Herodotus, note to book i., cap. 214, for an account of 

 the sepulchral chamber of Cyrus, with which, the dimensions of this ^nearly coincide . 



3 See Texier's Asie Mineure, vol. ii., p. 252, et. seq: and for M. Spiegenthal's 

 account of his excavations, see the Monatsbericht der Konigl : Preussisch : 

 Academie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Dec, 1854, pp. 700 — 702. Rawlinson's 

 Herodotus, vol. i., p. 234. 



4 Chandler's Tour in Asia Minor, ch. 78, p. 302. 



