Nereid Monument tomb Xanthos classical period Lycia Turkey Greek temple decorated sculpted friezes Byzantine era Charles Fellows
The Nereid Monument is a sculptured tomb from Xanthos in classical period Lycia, close to present-day Kinik in Antalya Province, Turkey. It took the form of a Greek temple on top of a base decorated with sculpted friezes, and is thought to have been built in the early fourth century BCE as a tomb for Arbinas (Lycian: Erbbina, or Erbinna), the Xanthian dynast who ruled western Lycia. The tomb is thought to have stood until the Byzantine era before falling into ruin. The ruins were rediscovered by British traveller Charles Fellows in the early 1840s. Fellows had them shipped to the British Museum: there some of them have been reconstructed to show what the East façade of the monument would have looked like. Although Arbinas ruled Lycia as part of the Persian Empire, the monument is built in a Greek style, influenced by the Ionic temples of the Athenian Acropolis.[5] The rich narrative sculptures on the monument portray Arbinas in various ways, combining Greek and Persian aspects. The temple-like tomb had four columns on its east and west faces, and six on the north and south. It stood elevated on a substantial podium, decorated with two friezes: a shallower upper frieze above a deeper lower frieze. In the reconstruction in the British Museum, the podium consists simply of the two friezes above one layer of blocks, whereas Fellows's sketch of the monument showed a much taller structure with two substantial rows of blocks below the lower frieze, and a further two rows separating the lower from the upper frieze. There are also reliefs on the architrave, cella walls, and in the pediment. There were many large free-standing sculptures, including those of Nereids between each pair of main columns.
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Photo credit: © SOTK2011 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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