Photo Essay: British Museum Part 5c Mausoleum of Halikarnassos

This is/was a spectacular monument, the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos for Mausolus. As it so happens, the word Mausoleum comes from this chap and what he did to his tomb. As it so happens, this is also one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The tomb was constructed by his wife and sister Artemisia and it was indeed a wonder. One of the tallest buildings of its time, it stood for 16 centuries till earthquakes tore it down by the time the Knights of St. John of Malta used the marble to build their castle at Bodrum, but they saved some statues and friezes. More excavations happened by British Archaeologists and basically the remains are in the British Museum, in a tiny museum at the original site and then rest of them are lost or in the Bodrum Castle.

But when you step into the room, you can see what a gigantic endeavour it was, how much Artemisia loved Mausolus and what a wonderful sight it would have been in its full glory. Here is a scale model of what it would have looked like in its full glory.

Do click on the photo to see the full high resolution photograph and remember this is just a scale model. The full height of this entire tomb is thought to be 45 meters and that too on top of a hill. So you can imagine the huge amount of work that went into this. There were four sculptors working simultaneously on the four sides. The competition to look good produced some spectacular sculpture.

 

Can you see the row of friezes just below the base of the columns on the top of the scale tomb? Well, here are the sole remaining pieces of those friezes which showed stories of the gods and battles of men. 

Here are the happy couple, whose statues were on top of the tomb, right at the top. The lady looks a bit worse for wear but the King looks regal. Just look at his face, he is royalty personified.

 

One of the colossal horses which drew the chariot on top of the tomb. You can make out the size of the horse from the lady who is standing next to the statue.



And here we have a rather dyspeptic, manky and constipated looking lion, these sculptures were placed between the columns. You need to walk into the room to get shocked by the gargantuan sculptures, but they are not just big, they are well proportioned and exquisitely carved (with the exception of the lion). I stood there and had a similar feeling when I saw the Great Pyramid. They dont speak to you, they overpower you. Here is the full slide show with higher resolution photographs.