DIOGENES: What is all this pomposity, you Karian? What’s the reason for your thinking you’re better than all of us?

MAUSSOLLOS: O Sinopian, I was a king, that’s why! A captured whole Karia and part of Lydia. I also was handsome; tall, I used to fight valiantly… I will also tell you the real reason: They built me a mausoleum in Halikarnassos (Bodrum) for me, a huge mausoleum; no mortal was ever blessed with such a big, such a well decorated one; they brought the most precious marble, they decorated horses and people just as they were on it. You cannot find even a more beautiful temple than my mausoleum. So, if I am proud of this, is it unfounded?

(Dialogs of the Other World, Lukianos of Samsat – 2nd Century A.D.)

Maussollos’s Halikarnassos

Bodrum’s Golden Age

Maussollos, who Lukaianos of Samsat has him talk to Diogenes of Sinop in Dialogs of the Other World, is one of the interesting historical personalities of history of Anatolia as Karia Satrab. Halikarnassos has undergone a golden age at the time of Mausollos, Satrab of Karia, from Hekatomnid Dynasty (circa 377/6 - 353/2 B.C.) under Persian sovereignty as an Ionian city. Mausollos, an admirer of Helenic culture, has moved the capital city of Karia from Mylasa (Milas) to Halikarnassos (Bodrum). The city is surrounded by walls rather broadly. Although the wall line has been damaged at times by picking up of stones since then, it was possible to observe the bastions and the foundations of walls until late 1980s. During the intense building activities post 1980s, all these walls of Bodrum from Mausollos period were partially destroyed or impaired. Yet, the wall could have been utilized as a green area and historical park by forming a conservation strip on either side.

During 24-year-long reign of Mausollos who also invited famous architects and sculptors of the time to Bodrum; Karia region and Bodrum, in a sense, went through their golden age. Upon his death, the antique world gained an important work deemed one of the seven wonders of the world. The mausoleum built by his wife and sister Artemisia after his death in 353 B.C. was according to Plinius a magnificent work with a 36-column pteron on a high base with a 24-pair step pyramid above it and at the very top, a quadriga pulled by four horses which was the work of sculptor Pytheos.

Reliefs and sculptures surrounding four sides of the mausoleum, built by Pytheus, the architect of Priene Athena Temple deemed to be a most competent specimen of Ioinan order, were built by the most famous sculptors of their time; Leochares, Bryaxis, Skopas and Timotheas (Vitrivius VII, Preamble 12-13).

Although the architecture of the mausoleum has been highly praised, its fame in the antique age mostly stemmed from its sculptures. Although there are very few surviving specimens, components in hand show that the admiration by the people of the antique world were not for nothing. There are three friezes with low reliefs beside the four-horse quadriga. There are a large number of statues (some of them clearly portraits) around the mausoleum with a series of lion figures viewing either right or left. After numerous discussions on the original positions of the lions, Jeppesen proved that they stood around pyramids.

The most striking of the surviving pieces is the head and forehead of one of the horses. Of the male portrait statues, according to Newton’s estimate, Maussollos himself is in the best shape. It is approximately 3 m. high and was formed by bringing together more than 70 pieces. The head was worked separately, sitting on a socket between shoulders. In terms of style, the statue is ancient Greek but his facial lines, beard and moustache grooming, long hair and tunic coming down to his ankles indicate that he is a local Anatolian. In Krischen’s restoration, the chariot frieze surrounds the

building. Yet, the location of this frieze is not fully known. There are chariots one after another in this frieze. In the other two friezes, the Greeks’ war against the Amazon and the Lapithes’ war against Kentauroses were depicted. Most pieces with reliefs which could survive until present are mostly from the Amazon frieze. The mausoleum, which was cited as an immortal diamond in Monk Eustathius’s (of Thessaloniki) work he authored before 1175 titled “Comments on Homeros”, was found to be in torn down form when Rhodes knights came to Bodrum in 1402. The city, which never underwent an earthquake, was demolished with the “World’s 7th Wonder” in the first major one but the ones who actually erased it from history were the Rhodes knights who dismantled its magnificent history piece by piece. The antique remnants of Bodrum, especially the mausoleum became a quarry and lime firing source providing ready building stones for the fort they were going to build. World famed architectural and sculpture works of Halikarnassos, the magnificent city of Mediterranean, were dismantled one by one and destroyed as slowly a fort rose in Bodrum’s silhouette. In this respect, the fort was actually a museum of antique Halikarnassos as a whole until the star of last century.

Work in Bodrum by Lord Stradford (1846) and C.T. Newton (1856) allowed numerous architectural and sculpture works of this magnificent building which are presently in British Museum, to be gained by science. Most recently, a commission chaired by Kristian Jeppesen undertook significant excavations both in the Mausoleum area and also on the area where the fort is built. The magnificent days of Halikarnassos in Roman age are immortalized in Vitrivius’s works. Vitrivius, describing the city as viewed from the famed brick palace of Maussollos likens the antique settlement to a theater. A wide road reminding of diazoma past over the agora on the shore which is identified with orchestra. The “Mausoleum” listed among the 7 Wonders of the World lied behind this road and the agora. Danish archaeologists have identified the peripheral wall of the Mausoleum (peribolos) from foundation remnants today. This wall made of white marble was 242 m. long on the north and 105 meter long on the east. Ares Temple rose at the highest and middle point of the walls in Göktepe. Here was a colossal statue built by Leochares according to some; or by Timotheus, according to others. On the right of the hill were the famed Salmakis fountain, Aphrodite and Hermes Temple and on the left was Mausollos’s famed palace. There was a hidden fort at the back of the palace.

The theater unearthed at the skirts of Göktepe, restored by Prof. Dr. Ümit Serdaroglu, is a great witness of antique Halikarnassos. Unfortunately today, a highway lies in front of its stage section. Antique pieces you see when touring Bodrum roads or visiting gardens, Doric column heads with inscriptions and traces of wall figures facing you when you enter the rock tombs on the skirts of Göktepe or tomb chambers inside the earth are witnesses surviving from Halikarnassos. The antique past of Bodrum lives under the earth and amazes us at times with discoveries like in the Queen Ada Tomb.

With its magnificent fort unmatched in Eastern Mediterranean, its legendary Salmakis Fountain, History’s Father Herodotus, Turgut Reis, Neyzen Tevfik, the Fisherman of Halikarnassos and exemplary underwater museum; Bodrum is one of the most characteristic corners of Western Anatolia.