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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