There can be little doubt that if excavations were carried out on a large scale on the coast of Asia Minor, amid the early Aeolic and Ionic settlements, we should be able to bridge the gap now existing between pre-historic and historic Greece. Doubtless by degrees the lacuna in our knowledge will be filled up. But at present it remains a lacuna. Before however we proceed to an account of the cemeteries of the great cities of Greece Proper, of Sparta and Athens and Thebes, we must glance at the tombs erected in semi-Greek districts of Asia, such as Phrygia and Lycia, in honour of the wealthy kings who there bore sway. Greek history may, in a sense, be said to begin with the Mermnadae of Lydia, and all our histories of Greek art contain a chapter on the archaic monuments of Lycia. A great part of the interior of Asia Minor is full of rock-sculptures, carved partly in the service of religion, partly as a record of the dead. Much of this sculpture is of great but unknown antiquity, and less closely related to any Hellenic work than to that of the races of Syria and Mesopotamia. The best general account of these remains will be found in the fifth volume of Perrot and Chipiez’ _Histoire de l’Art dans l’Antiquité_. It is only necessary in the present work to mention a few groups of monuments of a later time, which may be advantageously compared with early Greek monuments. Pausanias, who was well acquainted with the Ionian coast, tells us that he had seen[59] on Mount Sipylus a notable tomb ascribed by tradition to Tantalus, son of Zeus and Pluto (Πλούτω), and father of Pelops, who gave his name to the Peloponnesus. This monument has been identified[60] in a tumulus of which the remains still stand on a spur of Sipylus. It was excavated, and partly destroyed, by M. Texier, whose drawings, which are here repeated, give us a notion of its original form and disposition (Fig. 21). Save for the fact that it was not covered with earth, but stood free, this tumulus bears a striking resemblance to the tombs at Mycenae and Orchomenus. And the chamber within [Illustration: FIG. 21. TUMULUS ON SIPYLUS.] [Illustration: FIG. 22. SECTION OF CHAMBER[61].] (Fig. 22) in many points of construction recalls the chamber of the beehive tombs, though its ground plan is not circular like theirs, but oblong. It is certainly remarkable to find, in the very district whence, according to the legends, Pelops came, a tomb so closely resembling those said to have been erected in Greece by his sons and grandsons. This however leads us to historical questions into which we must not at present enter. [Illustration: FIG. 23. TOMB OF MIDAS.]