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Mrs Mausolus Starts a Fashion for Tombs
King Mausolus, who lived 2300 years ago, although
a reasonably fearsome leader and the conqueror of
Rhodes, was, at the end of the day, a bit of an also ran
when compared to the star turns of the Persian Empire.
For Mausolus it wasn’t his life that made him famous,
it was his death. His wife loved him very much indeed,
perhaps doubly so because she was also his sister and
when he died she drank his ashes with wine and built
for him a mighty tomb-monument that was to lend its
name to all monumental above-ground tombs to
follow. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in Turkey,
today known as Bodrum, stood for an impressive
sixteen centuries until its stone was pillaged in the late
15
th
century by the Knights of St John of Malta to
build a crusader castle.
Of the remaining Ancient Wonders two were statues.
The 40-foot high gold and ivory statue of Zeus at
Olympia (for the games) was made around 435 BC by
the Greek sculptor Phidias and was probably lost in a
fire 800 years later. The Colossus at Rhodes built
around 280 BC was a bronze statue of Helios or
Apollo as tall as a fifteen-story building. Legend says
it straddled the harbour mouth so that ships had to sail
between its legs. It lasted little more than 50 years until
destroyed by an earthquake. The Oracle of Delphi
warned against its rebuilding and it lay derelict for ten
centuries the bronze was sold for scrap by Arab
invaders and carted off on the backs of 900 camels.
Indiana Jones Retires to the British Seaside
Far easier to track down are two Ancient Wonders,
both from Turkey and dating from around 550 BC,
which survive, at least in part, within the walls of the
British Museum. The beautiful marble Temple of
Artemis or Diana at Ephesus was built by order of
the Lydian King Croesus – the one that had a few
bob. Serving as both religious sanctuary and
marketplace the temple got a mention in the New
Testament when St Paul was shouted down by the
mob chanting
Great is Diana of the Ephesians
(Acts 19:34). The temple was burned down,
tradition has it, on the very night that Alexander the
Great was born in 356 BC.
Rebuilt, Diana’s Temple stood for another 600 years
until it was finally destroyed by the Goths. The
British Museum sponsored Hackney architect cum
early archaeological adventurer John Turtle Wood
to find it, which he did in 1869 buried 20 feet
beneath the sands. Lionised for the discovery
Turtle Wood (not as catchy as Indiana Jones is it?)
was awarded an annual pension of £200 but
enduring bandits, earthquakes, injuries, fevers and
the extremes of hot and cold had taken their toll on
his health. He retired to 66 Marine Parade, Worthing
and was buried at Christ Church in 1890.
It was another Victorian adventurer and seaside
retiree (Margate this time) who brought home to the
British Museum parts of the fourth ancient wonder.
