DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0404
PYRAMID AND TEMPLE
Christian period are of little or no importance. Even the
museum contains hardly anything of artistic value that one
would care to carry off. The early things are mostly ethno-
graphic junk and the later Greek works are a libel on the
Greek spirit; the worst of all is the Alexander sarcophagus
admired byall archaeologists — a monstrous piece of furniture.
The connexion of this symbol of bourgeois gorgeousness
with the name of the proud conqueror rouses one’s indigna-
tion. Thomas has written the thesis for his doctorate on the
subject; he argues that Alexander never lay in this sarco-
phagus, though this masterpiece of Attic art is well worthy of
Alexander.
Here and there, hidden by Turkish whitewash, you can
still see traces of the Byzantine golden age. The most
remarkable, though least conspicuous, remains are under-
ground: the gigantic water-cisterns, immeasurable halls,
whose floor is under water and whose vaulted ceilings are
held up by countless columns. ‘Halls’ is much too mild a
word. When I entered the first cistern I was seized with a
sort of agoraphobia. It is called the cistern of the thousand
and one columns. A forest of stone extends, one imagines,
under the entire city. Fantastic pictures, dark and grand and
utterly strange, play over the glistening mirror of water.
Creatures of another world might here have disported them-
selves or performed their unholy rites. The actual fact that
an exceedingly plausible and practical purpose, the collecting
of water, is responsible for all this splendour, arouses the
resistance of our mystery-loving imagination, which alone
here under the earth gets an inkling of the legendary
Constantinople it was expecting and was denied above ground.
Columns and columns: a perfect paroxysm of them. It
seems the Doric flutes of light have long since been shut out.
The whole darkness of earth now rests on these firm sup-
ports; and the capitals bend under the burden.
Down below, the forests of columns in the cisterns; up
37°
Christian period are of little or no importance. Even the
museum contains hardly anything of artistic value that one
would care to carry off. The early things are mostly ethno-
graphic junk and the later Greek works are a libel on the
Greek spirit; the worst of all is the Alexander sarcophagus
admired byall archaeologists — a monstrous piece of furniture.
The connexion of this symbol of bourgeois gorgeousness
with the name of the proud conqueror rouses one’s indigna-
tion. Thomas has written the thesis for his doctorate on the
subject; he argues that Alexander never lay in this sarco-
phagus, though this masterpiece of Attic art is well worthy of
Alexander.
Here and there, hidden by Turkish whitewash, you can
still see traces of the Byzantine golden age. The most
remarkable, though least conspicuous, remains are under-
ground: the gigantic water-cisterns, immeasurable halls,
whose floor is under water and whose vaulted ceilings are
held up by countless columns. ‘Halls’ is much too mild a
word. When I entered the first cistern I was seized with a
sort of agoraphobia. It is called the cistern of the thousand
and one columns. A forest of stone extends, one imagines,
under the entire city. Fantastic pictures, dark and grand and
utterly strange, play over the glistening mirror of water.
Creatures of another world might here have disported them-
selves or performed their unholy rites. The actual fact that
an exceedingly plausible and practical purpose, the collecting
of water, is responsible for all this splendour, arouses the
resistance of our mystery-loving imagination, which alone
here under the earth gets an inkling of the legendary
Constantinople it was expecting and was denied above ground.
Columns and columns: a perfect paroxysm of them. It
seems the Doric flutes of light have long since been shut out.
The whole darkness of earth now rests on these firm sup-
ports; and the capitals bend under the burden.
Down below, the forests of columns in the cisterns; up
37°