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Halikarnassos
SHAPED like a shallow theatre around an excellent harbour, Halikarnassos
attracted Dorian Greek colonists early in the first millennium BC. Despite a
strong admixture of indigenous Karians (the father of Herodotos, a native of the
city, had a Karian name), the city was one of the centres of Hellenism in
south-west Asia Minor. These features doubtless prompted Mausolos, satrap of
Karia 377-353 BC, to move his capital here from rural inland Mylasa. He
organised the city on a gridiron pattern, built the city walls along the crest
of the surrounding hills, constructed a luxurious palace for himself, and
imported artists from all over the Greek world. The Mausoleum was begun during
his lifetime and completed after his death by his sisterwife Artemisia.
Most
of Halikarnassos is under the modern city and we usually restrict our visits to
the Mausoleum and the Castle of the Knights (the specialist may want to walk to
the ruined theatre above the Mausoleum or the recently restored fourth century
BC Myndian gate in the citywalls to the west of town). The Mausoleum occupied a
commanding central site on the main east-west axis overlooking the harbour; it
was a signal honour to be buried within the city walls, and an earlier tomb
incorporated into Mausolos’ precinct, perhaps that of another Artemisia, queen
of Halikarnassos in the early fi fth century BC, would at that time have been
outside the walls. The massive foundations give only a faint idea of what the
Mausoleum, originally 45 or more metres high, must have looked like, but there
is a good little museum on site displaying recent reconstructions and excavated
material. The most notable Greek sculptors of the day adorned the building,
which became one of the seven wonders of the world in the third century BC, and
a tourist attraction until well into Roman times. It remained relatively
undamaged until the twelfth century AD, but when the Knights arrived in the fi
fteenth they found it in ruins, probably toppled by an earthquake; they used the
greenish granite blocks of its base to build their castle, and consigned much of
the marble statuary to the lime-kiln. The excavations of Charles Newton in the
1850s yielded some statues and carvings, now on display in the British Museum:
the large male and female statues are almost certainly not Mausolos and
Artemisia, but relatives or courtiers.
The Knights of St. John built and occupied their castle between 1402 and 1523,
when, after Süleyman the Magnifi cent captured Rhodes, they withdrew to Crete
and then Malta, and Bodrum became part of the Ottoman Empire. The castle has
been restored and converted into a museum. Among the most noteworthy exhibits
are the grave-goods and reconstructed fi gure of a mid-late fourth century
Karian noblewoman; her features have been reconstructed from her skull by two
experts from Manchester, and resemble those on a marble head in the Wolfson
Gallery of the British Museum, which has been attributed to Ada, sister and
successor of Mausolos. Bodrum is a centre for underwater archaeology, and the
museum displays three wrecks with their cargoes dating from the late fourteenth
century BC, the seventh century AD and the eleventh century AD. Within the
castle walls Danish archaeologists have recently located the foundations
ofMausolos’ palace and evidence of a temple of Apollo: some of the smaller
column drums embedded in the walls of the castle appear to have been taken from
the latter by the knights.
WESTMINSTER CLASSIC TOURS