Although Egypt and Assyria are justly credited with the creation of the models and the invention of the methods that subsequently aroused to life the artistic genius of the Greeks, yet the fact remains that, from all the wealth of artistic forms bequeathed to succeeding ages by the nations of hoary antiquity, prior to the Grecian period, nothing has survived except those forms which Greece has selected from her predecessors, and after remodelling them by her own standards of beauty and fitness, has left them as imperishable models of art for all nations that follow her. All historic art and architecture, whether classic or what not, since the days of Pericles, is based on Greek art, notwithstanding the many modifications which we see in Byzantine, Saracenic, Romanesque, and their offshoots. All of them owe their life and vitality to Greek traditions and to Greek principles. We have seen that in the earlier Greek buildings, such as Mycenian palaces, timber construction must have largely entered into the architecture of that period, and it is quite likely that timber was used for the greater part of the Greek domestic dwellings, which may account for no remains of them having been found. The rock-cut tombs of Lycia, in Asia Minor, afford to us a further proof of timber construction which may have been in use in the Early Greek period in Europe, and these tombs of Lycia tend to throw a side light on the probable forms of Greek construction that existed between the date of the Mycenian buildings and that of the oldest Doric remains that are at present known, for the Lycians had free intercourse with the Ionians and European Greeks. The earlier Lycian tombs are of a great antiquity, and the same form of tomb has been used in Lycia down to periods when Greece was far advanced in art (Figs. 298 and 299). [Illustration: Fig. 298.—Lycian Rock-built Tomb at Pinara. (P. & C.)] The Lycians formed a connecting link with the Anterior Asiatics and the Ionian Greeks. Their origin and their language were Asiatic, but the greater part of their art was the product of Hellenic artists from Ionian Greece, and, therefore, the Lycians must have been intimately connected with the Greeks, and must have played an important part in the development of Hellenic culture. [Illustration: Fig. 299.—Lycian Rock-built Tomb at Pinara. (P. & C.)] The Greek temples were in some respects related to the Egyptian temple. The pillar and beam construction was copied from Egypt, and also the rectangular plan. The great distinction between the two was that rows of columns were placed outside the temples of the Greeks, which gave to them a light and airy appearance, while in contradistinction the Egyptians had their rows of columns inside the great hypostyle halls and galleries of their temples which gave to them the effect of oppressive gloominess. Broadly speaking, the Greek temple was something of the model of an Egyptian temple turned inside out.