It has left behind it so few relics of its existence, that we can only guess at what it must have been in the days of its prosperity.  Three or four ruined fortresses, a few votive stelae, and a dozen bas-reliefs cut on the faces of cliffs in a style which at first recalls the Hittite and Asianic carvings of the preceding age, and afterwards, as we come down to later times, betrays the influence of early Greek art.  In the midst of one of their cemeteries we come upon a monument resembling the facade of a house or temple cut out of the virgin rock; it consists of a low triangular pediment, surmounted by a double scroll, then a rectangle of greater length than height, framed between two pilasters and a horizontal string-course, the centre being decorated with a geometrical design of crosses in a way which suggests the pattern of a carpet; a recess is hollowed out on a level with the ground, and filled by a blind door with rebated doorposts.  Is it a tomb?  The inscription carefully engraved above one side of the pediment contains the name of Midas, and seems to show that we have before us a commemorative monument, piously dedicated by a certain Ates in honour of the Phrygian hero.

[Illustration:  096.jpg A PHRYGIAN GOD]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Ramsay.

Elsewhere we come upon the outlines of a draped female form, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by two lions, or of a man clothed in a short tunic, holding a sort of straight sceptre in his hand, and we fancy that we have the image of a god before our eyes, though we cannot say which of the deities handed down by tradition it may represent.  The religion of the Phrygians is shrouded in the same mystery as their civilisation and their art, and presents a curious mixture of European and Asianic elements.  The old aboriginal races had worshipped from time immemorial a certain mother-goddess, Ma, or Amma, the black earth, which brings forth without ceasing, and nourishes all living things.  Her central place of worship seems, originally, to have been in the region of the Anti-taurus, and it was there that her sacred cities—­Tyana, Venasa, and the Cappadocian Comana—­were to be found as late as Roman times; in these towns her priests were regarded as kings, and thousands of her priestesses spent lives of prostitution in her service; but her sanctuaries, with their special rites and regulations, were scattered over the whole peninsula.  She was sometimes worshipped under the form of a meteoric stone, or betyle similar to those found in Canaan;* more frequently she was represented in female shape, with attendant lions, or placed erect on a lion in the attitude of walking.

* E.g. at Mount Dindymus and at Pessinus, which latter place was supposed to possess the oldest sanctuary of Cybele.  The Pessinus stone, which was carried off to Rome in 204 B.C., was small, irregular in shape, and of a dark colour.  Another stone represented Ida.

[Illustration:  097.jpg THE MOTHER-GODDESS BETWEEN LIONS]