DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4679#0012
xii INTRODUCTION.
The execution of this plan in the present work is imperfect, as I am
well aware. Much more might be done than I can do, and much
more will yet be done \ But fortune has placed in my hands a con-
siderable mass of knowledge, and it seems better to present it to the
world as well as my powers and opportunities permit. Before I entered
Asia Minor in May 1880, I had been pondering for months over the
problems of its history; and since that time it has been my last
thought as I fell asleep and my first on waking. Barely has a space
of five hours elapsed by day or by night in which some point of
Phrygian antiquities or topography has not been occupying my mind.
I have turned over each problem, attempted almost every possible
combination, tried numberless changes from various points of view,
and gradually month by month the subject has grown clearer. I have
enjoyed the advantage of revisiting the country year after year till
1891, and testing the ideas and combinations that had been shaping
themselves in my mind. In the later visits I have known what to
look for, and where to look for it; and have often been able to guide
the natives of the district to the spot I wanted (to their own great
astonishment), pick up the evidence required, and pass on after a few
minutes' stay. In those later visits it has often been brought home
to me how much time was wasted on my earlier journeys through
want of knowledge. If I criticize some mistakes and misconceptions
of other travellers, I can do so because I have made the same errors
myself; their misconceptions are old friends of mine, which have
kept me company in long weary rides, which have deluded me and
lured me on to spend time and health in proving their real character.
Almost every village on the map of Phrygia, and many not on the
map, rouse memories for me ; one is the scene of some laughable
adventure, one of some great disappointment, a third of a midnight
ride, in a fourth we sawed away part of the floor of a mosque (with
the connivance of the imam) to disclose an inscription, in a fifth some
artful dodge had to be employed to win a copy from the unwilling
owner of a ' written stone; in all patience and work were needed. But
1 In collecting the evidence of books, information does not carry full force to
the scholar in Scotland suffers from the the mind except when it is immersed
want of a scholar's library ; and though in the subject. Besides the Aberdeen
I kept lists of references to recondite Library, I am indebted to Prof. Fergu-
books, and looked them up in Oxford son of Glasgow, and Mr. Webster, Uni-
and London at a later time, yet such versity Librarian, Edinburgh.
The execution of this plan in the present work is imperfect, as I am
well aware. Much more might be done than I can do, and much
more will yet be done \ But fortune has placed in my hands a con-
siderable mass of knowledge, and it seems better to present it to the
world as well as my powers and opportunities permit. Before I entered
Asia Minor in May 1880, I had been pondering for months over the
problems of its history; and since that time it has been my last
thought as I fell asleep and my first on waking. Barely has a space
of five hours elapsed by day or by night in which some point of
Phrygian antiquities or topography has not been occupying my mind.
I have turned over each problem, attempted almost every possible
combination, tried numberless changes from various points of view,
and gradually month by month the subject has grown clearer. I have
enjoyed the advantage of revisiting the country year after year till
1891, and testing the ideas and combinations that had been shaping
themselves in my mind. In the later visits I have known what to
look for, and where to look for it; and have often been able to guide
the natives of the district to the spot I wanted (to their own great
astonishment), pick up the evidence required, and pass on after a few
minutes' stay. In those later visits it has often been brought home
to me how much time was wasted on my earlier journeys through
want of knowledge. If I criticize some mistakes and misconceptions
of other travellers, I can do so because I have made the same errors
myself; their misconceptions are old friends of mine, which have
kept me company in long weary rides, which have deluded me and
lured me on to spend time and health in proving their real character.
Almost every village on the map of Phrygia, and many not on the
map, rouse memories for me ; one is the scene of some laughable
adventure, one of some great disappointment, a third of a midnight
ride, in a fourth we sawed away part of the floor of a mosque (with
the connivance of the imam) to disclose an inscription, in a fifth some
artful dodge had to be employed to win a copy from the unwilling
owner of a ' written stone; in all patience and work were needed. But
1 In collecting the evidence of books, information does not carry full force to
the scholar in Scotland suffers from the the mind except when it is immersed
want of a scholar's library ; and though in the subject. Besides the Aberdeen
I kept lists of references to recondite Library, I am indebted to Prof. Fergu-
books, and looked them up in Oxford son of Glasgow, and Mr. Webster, Uni-
and London at a later time, yet such versity Librarian, Edinburgh.