The mausoleum of halicarnasos was built in approximately 353 B.C., and it was said to be one of the finest buildings in all of halicarnasos. The mausoleum’s construction was ordered by Queen Artemisia to be a tomb and monument of King Mausolus.
After his death, Queen Artemisia resolved to build him the most immaculate tomb the world had ever seen. She sent for the most gifted artist of that time period. Sculptors like Scopas who had helped rebuild the temple of artemis at ephesus, and others such as timotheus bryaxis and leochares.
The architects who answered Artemisias call were Satyros and Pythias. In building the tomb no effort was made to out do the pyramids. Two years after her husband’s death and the construction of the tomb began, queen artemisa died.
At this time the tomb was still incomplete, however the sculptors resolved to finish their work. The tomb became known as the mausoleum, and the word has passed into our language, as a word used to describe a large tomb.
Earthquakes destroyed the mausoleum in the fifteenth century, shattering the columns and sending the chariot crashing down. By 1404 AD only the square base remained intact, the rest of the stone was used by the Crusaders for building material.
It was the Crusaders who discovered what was in the base of the monument, and it was during this time that a group of Crusaders ransacked the tomb stripping it of all its treasure. In 1897 a British archeologist named Newton began to excavate the remains. He found fragments of the chariot and uncovered statues of both mausolos and artemisia.
The remains can be found in the mausoleum Room of the British Museum. The Mausoleum overlooked the city of halicarnasos for many centuries. It was untouched when the city fell to Alexander the Great in 334 B.C. and still undamaged after attacks by pirates in 62 and 58 B.C.. It stood above the city ruins for some 17 centuries. Then a series of earthquakes shattered the columns and sent the stone chariot crashing to the ground. By 1404 A.D. only the very base of the Mausoleum was still recognizable.
Crusaders, who had occupied the city from the thirteen century onward, recycled the broken stone into their own buildings. In 1522 rumours of a Turkish invasion caused Crusaders to strengthen the castle at halicarnasos (which was by then known as Bodrum) and much of the remaining portions of the tomb was broken up and used within the castle walls. Indeed sections of polished marble from the tomb can still be seen there today.
In 1846 the Museum sent the archaeologist Charles Thomas Newton to search for more remains of the Mausoleum. He had a difficult job. He didn’t know the exact location of the tomb and the cost of buying up all the small parcels of land in the area to look for it would have been astronomical.
Instead Newton studied the accounts of ancient writers like Pliny to obtain the approximate size and location of the memorial, then bought a plot of land in the most likely location. Digging down, Newton explored the surrounding area through tunnels he dug under the surrounding plots. He was able to locate some walls, a staircase, and finally three of the corners of the foundation.
With this knowledge, Newton was able to figure out which plots of land he needed to buy. Newton then excavated the site and found sections of the reliefs that decorated the wall of the building and portions of the stepped roof. Also a broken stone chariot wheel, some seven feet in diameter, from the sculpture on the roof was discovered.
Finally, he found the statues of mausolus and artemisia that had stood at the pinnacle of the building. Today these works of art stand in the Mausoleum Room at the British Museum. There the images of mausolus and his queen forever watch over the few broken remains of the beautiful tomb she built for him.
Today, the massive castle still stands in bodrum, and the polished stone and marble blocks of the mausoleum can be spotted within the walls of the structure.
Some of the sculptures survived and are today on display at the British Museum in London. These include fragment of statues and many slabs of the frieze showing the battle between the greeks and the amazons. At the site of the Mausoleum itself, only the foundation remains of the once magnificent Wonder.
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