The Mausoleum at Halikarnassos - Later History

The Mausoleum at Halikarnassos was built as a tomb for Maussollos, a member of the Hekatomnid dynasty who governed Karia in south-west Asia Minor. According to the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, the tomb was 140 feet high, had a peristyle of thirty-six columns and a stepped pyramid roof, crowned with a marble quadriga (a four-horsed chariot).

The Mausoleum probably stood intact until Medieval times, when it is thought to have been badly damaged by an earthquake. Stone and sculpture from the building were re-used both by the crusader Knights of St John in the fortification of their castle at Bodrum in AD 1494, and by the local inhabitants.

In 1846 many slabs of the Amazon frieze were recovered from the castle by Sir Stratford Canning, British Ambassador at Constantinople, and presented to The British Museum. In 1856 Charles Newton re-discovered and excavated the site of the Mausoleum, uncovering numerous fragments of sculpture and architecture. Further investigations at the site were undertaken in the nineteenth century by Alfred Biliotti and Auguste Salzmann and more recently by a team of Danish archaeologists.