all very early
examples of the styles, it is necessarily obscure. Such information,
however, as we possess, taken together with the internal evidence
afforded by the features of the matured style, points to the influence
of Egypt, to that of Assyria and Persia, and to an early manner of
timber construction--the forms proper to which were retained in spite
of the abandonment of timber for marble--as all contributing to the
formation of Greek architecture.

In Asia Minor a series of monuments, many of them rock-cut, has been
discovered, which throw a curious light upon the early growth of
architecture. We refer to tombs found in Lycia, and attributed to
about the seventh century B.C. In these we obviously have the first
work in stone of a nation of ship builders. A Lycian tomb--such as the
one now to be seen, accurately restored, in the British
Museum--represents a structure of beams of wood framed together,
surmounted by a roof which closely resembles a boat turned upside
down. The planks, the beams to which they were secured, and even a
ridge similar to the keel of a vessel, all reappear here, showing that
the material in use for building was so universally timber, that when
the tomb was to be "graven in the rock for ever" the forms of a timber
structure were those that presented themselves to the imagination of
the sculptor. In other instances the resemblance to shipwrights' work
disappears, and that of a carpenter is followed by that of the mason.
Thus we find imitations of timber beams framed together and of
overhanging low-pitched roofs, in some cases carried on unsquared
rafters lying side by side, in several of these tombs.

What happened on the Asiatic shore of the Egean must have occurred on
the Greek shores, and though none of the very earliest specimens of
reproduction in stone of timber structures has come down to us, there
are abundant traces, as we shall presently see, of timber originals in
buildings of the Doric order. Timber originals were not, however, the
only sources from which the early inhabitants of Greece drew their
inspiration.

Constructions of extreme antiquity, and free from any appearance of
imitating structures of timber, mark the sites of the oldest cities of
Greece, Mycenae and Orchomenos for example, the most ancient being
Pelasgic city walls of unwrought stone (Fig. 51). The so-called
Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, a circular underground chamber 48 ft.
6 in. in diameter, and with a p