She’s my wife…I mean sister

Me behind a Carian statue at the Bodrum castle. Photo by David Lansing.

So at the castle in Bodrum there are all these old canons and amphora and knickknacks from the Bronze age, but for some reason what really fascinated me was seeing some broken statues and bits and pieces of architecture from the Carians.

The Carians were the first known group to take up residence in the Bodrum region. Nobody knows exactly when the Carians first entered the picture but they were here at least a thousand years before JC started making the rounds in the Middle East. You don’t hear much about the Carians these days. But they had some cool characters. One of whom was named Mausolus.

Mausolus ruled the Carians from Bodrum between 377 and 353 BC. He was a big time conqueror, taking part in several wars in and around the region (including capturing several Greek islands). That’s not particularly interesting, I suppose, but this is: He married his sister, Artemisia. And when Mausolus died, his sister (who was now also his widow), ordered a couple of Greek architects, Satyros and Pythis, to build a momument to her brother/husband that would also be his tomb.

Believe it or not, no one had ever thought of that idea before. And so this temple-like structure, decorated with reliefs and statuary on a massive base, was named after the ruler it entombed and called a “mausoleum.” And that’s where we get the word.

By the way, the structure stood for 1700 years. Until an earthquake destroyed it. And now all that’s left of the Mausolus mausoleum is the foundations and few pieces of sculpture. Like the statue I stuck my head on.