When we consider the series of Lycian tombs, which may be studied better in the British Museum than in any other museum of Europe, we find a most interesting blending of Oriental and Greek elements[68]. Their architecture is local; the main feature of it being that it renders directly, in stone and in rock, forms which are clearly in origin wooden. Everywhere we see the square beam as it were petrified. In the roof of the ordinary Greek temple we see that the forms were thought out while the building material was still wood, and only modified when stone took the place of beams. In the Lycian tombs this feature is still more notable, because the Lycian architects lacked the nimbleness of the Greek intellect, and were more conservative of settled forms. The sculptures which adorn these curious constructions have also local elements, but in this field the art of Ionia comes in as a controlling force in the sixth century, rendering the native customs and beliefs in forms to which the student of Greek art is accustomed. It may be that our familiarity with the forms and style of the sculpture in some degree misleads us. When we know the words of a language we sometimes too hastily think that we are masters of its thought. The religion and the customs of Lycia may resemble those of Greece less closely than the monuments would lead us to think. But in ancient times art influenced custom as well as custom art. In the present state of our knowledge we cannot regard the early monuments of Lycia as outside the pale of Greek art. There are indeed, as M. Perrot has well shown, among Lycian archaic monuments a few which seem to precede the Ionic influence. Such is the square chest of the British Museum[69], on one side of which is a lion strangling an ox, on another side a lioness with her cubs, on the third a man slaying a lion, and on the fourth a group of horsemen and warriors on foot. The lion-slayer in particular takes our thoughts not to Greece but to Egypt and Assyria. Many of the tombs which do show Ionic influence are not suggestive in the present connexion. Their sculptural adornment is such as we might expect to find as soon on a temple as on a tomb; satyrs, animals, sphinxes and the like. We will here consider only a few monuments, the sculpture of which seems to be really sepulchral in character.