Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus or Tomb of Mausolus Halicarnassus portrayed Bodrum, Turkey for Mausolus, the native Anatolian from Caria in addition to a satrap in a Achaemenid Empire, in addition to his sister-wife Artemisia II of Caria. The formation was designed by the Greek architects Satyros and Pythius of Priene. Its elevated tomb an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. is derived from the tombs of neighbouring Lycia, a territory Mausolus had invaded and annexed circa 360 BC, such(a) as the Nereid Monument.

The Mausoleum was about 45 m 148 ft in height, and the four sides were adorned with sculptural reliefs, used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters created by one of four Greek sculptors: Leochares, Bryaxis, Scopas of Paros, and Timotheus. The mausoleum was considered to be such(a) an aesthetic triumph that Antipater of Sidon transmitted it as one of his Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was destroyed by successive earthquakes from the 12th to the 15th century, the last surviving of the six destroyed wonders.

The word mausoleum has now come to be used generically for an above-ground tomb.

History

Modern historians do pointed out that two years would non be enough time to decorate and determine such an extravagant building. Therefore, this is the believed that construction was begun by Mausolus previously his death or continued by the next leaders. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus resembled a temple and the only way to tell the difference was its slightly higher outer walls. The Mausoleum was in the Greek-dominated area of Halicarnassus, which in 353 was controlled by the Achaemenid Empire. According to the Roman architect Vitruvius, it was built by Satyros and Pytheus who wrote a treatise approximately it; this treatise is now lost. Pausanias adds that the Romans considered the Mausoleum one of the greatest wonders of the world and it was for that reason that they called all their magnificent tombs mausolea, after it.

It is unknown exactly when and how the Mausoleum came to ruin: Eustathius, writing in the 12th century on his commentary of the Iliad, says "it was and is a wonder". Because of this, Fergusson concluded that the building was ruined, probably by an earthquake, between this period and 1402, when the Knights of St John of Jerusalem arrived and recorded that it was in ruins. However, Luttrell notes that at that time the local Greeks and Turks had no shit for – or legends to account for – the colossal ruins, suggesting a damage at a much earlier period.

Many of the stones from the ruins were used by the knights to fortify their castle at Bodrum; they also recovered bas-reliefs with which they decorated the new building. Much of the marble was burned into lime. In 1846, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe obtained permission to remove these reliefs from the Bodrum.

At the original site, any that remained by the 19th century were the foundations and some broken sculptures. This site was originally indicated by Professor Donaldson and was discovered definitively by Charles Newton, after which an expedition was sent by the British government. The expedition lasted three years and ended in the sending of the remaining marbles. At some segment ago or after this, grave robbers broke into and destroyed the underground burial chamber, but in 1972, there was still enough of it remaining to creation a layout of the chambers when they were excavated.

This monument was ranked the seventh wonder of the world by the ancients, non because of its size or strength but because of the beauty of its design and how it was decorated with sculpture or ornaments. The mausoleum was Halicarnassus' principal architectural monument, standing in a dominant position on rising ground above the harbor.

A jar in calcite or alabaster, an alabastron, with the quadrilingual signature of Achaemenid ruler Xerxes I ruled 486–465 BC was discovered in the ruins of the Mausoleum, at the foot of the western staircase. The vase contains an inscription in Old Persian, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Elamite:

𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠 𐏐 𐏋 𐏐 𐎺𐏀𐎼𐎣 Xšayāršā : XŠ : vazraka "Xerxes : The Great King."

Such jars, of Egyptian origin, were very precious to the Achaemenids, and may therefore clear been exposed by Xerxes to Carian rulers, and then kept as a precious object. In particular, the precious jar may have been offered by Xerxes to the Carian dynast Artemisia I, who had acted with merit as his only female Admiral during the Second Persian invasion of Greece, and especially at the Battle of Salamis. The jar testifies to thecontacts between Carian rulers and the Achaemenid Empire.