1. Situation

The Mausoleum formed an architectural ensemble together with the archaic tumulus, which is to the west of the monument, along the antique road leading from Ephesus through the Caystros valley to Sardis (fig. 1).¹ The north façade of the Mausoleum was facing this road. To the east of the monument lies an approximately 48 m deep and 75 m wide terrace, which is bordered by a slightly inclined terrace-wall. It was probably used for cult activities in honour of the death.²

2. Architectural description

The two-storey Mausoleum is formed by a Doric-style pedestal and an upper level comprising Corinthian architecture.

2.1. The pedestal

The base of the ground level has an almost exact square surface of about 29,70 m sidelength.³ This measurement corresponds approximately with hundred feet, the building is therefore a hekatompedos in length and width.⁴ The center of the pedestal is formed by a rock-core - directly cut from the limestone of a mountain ledge, roughly polished and encased with marble blocks (fig. 2). The marble blocks gave the impression that the ground level is massively layered. A skirting and a lying Lesbian cymation were assembled over the three-stepped crepidoma and decorated the lower part of the ground level, while a Doric frieze with plain metopes and a cornice concludes the pedestal. The precise height of the pedestal from the lower edge of the first step of the crepidoma to the upper edge of the stylobate of the peristasis can be declared as 10,70 m.⁵ A false door worked into the middle of the north side accentuated the main front of the monument.

2.2. The burial chamber

The burial chamber is cut into the south side of the rock-core and is not exactly situated on the main axis of the monument, but lies a little bit to the east. The chamber (fig. 3) was covered by a barrel vault and consists of a large mainchamber and a smaller antechamber, which were connected through a door. In the mainchamber a sarcophagus was standing on the right-hand side next to the door. On the same side between the sarcophagus and the northern wall a bank of the same height as the chest of the sarcophagus was cut out from the rock (fig. 4). Rock-cut understructures including klinai and tables are well known from tombs in Asia Minor and in Macedonia as well as in South-Italy and Alexandria.⁶

2.3. The upper level

Eight fluted columns on each side formed the peristasis and surrounded the core-building. The columns were placed on Attic bases and were concluded by Corinthian capitals. A regular and polychrome coloured entablature with a three-fasciated architrav, a profiled anthemion and a cornice, ran above the capitals (fig. 5). The peristasis was covered by a ceiling and a roof made of flat marble tiles. Figural reliefs adorned the panels of the ceiling. The north façade was additionally emphasized by a bathron and a second colonnade topped by palm capitals.⁷

2.4. The core building

The rectangular cella-like core building was built as an unroofed court. A part of its walls remains in situ on the north side. The inner front of the walls featured pillar-like ledges, which were probably used as a static reinforcement. As can be seen from the in situ evidence on the north wall, the flooring of the court, which was probably made of thin stone slabs and of which only the substructure remains, was applied to the inner front of the walls with precisely made and finely polished joints (fig. 6).⁸ The flooring was not conventionally layed out horizontally but with two strong gradients. On the one hand, the flooring slopes from the north and the south side toward the center of the court and on the other hand it is tilted toward the westside of the core building (fig. 7). The slopings can only be reasonably explained as an effective water drainage for the unroofed court. Through the gradients the rainwater was canalized to one or two outlets in the middle of the westside of the core building, then led under the western wall and the peristasis and off the pedestal.⁹

The two fasciated wall-architrave of the core-building is preserved in several blocks – some of them inscribed. Only one epigram is complete stating the Heliades, the sisters of Phaeton. The inscriptions could be parts of paintings, reliefs or freestanding sculptures illustrating the myth of Phaeton¹⁰ and decorating the court or the peristasis of the upper level.¹¹

The building remained unfinished. Bosses on the encased blocks of the pedestal and incompletley carved moldings and capitals verify – as well as the unfinished terrace at the east of the Mausoleum – an abortion of the work.

3. Reconstruction

In older well-known reconstructions the Mausoleum was originally believed to have a stepped pyramidal roof topped by a quadriga in analogy to the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.¹² It was argued, that in Belevi the original plan had been changed and – maybe in a second phase – only the roof of the peristasis had been finished. But the Mausoleum was erected in one procedure, there is no evidence for a pyramidal roof or a second phase of construction (fig. 8). Architectural and sculptural elements are unfinished because work had been stopped at an unknown time. The construction of the top of the pedestal, especially the base of the walls of the court and the inner structure of the flooring prove that the upper level had been originally planned as a hypaethral core-building surrounded by a roofed peristasis (fig. 9).¹³

4. Pictorial or sculptural decoration and colour

4.1. The sarcophagus

(Selçuk Museum, Inv. 1610):
The front of the sarcophagus’ chest (fig. 10) was adorned by a relief showing a kline, a low table and a footstool. The rung of the kline is provided with an adoration-frieze: eleven draped sirens playing instruments – flutes and lyres – and singing. The frieze is unfinished, the characters remain in different phases of perfection.

The male figure on top of the lid of the sarcophagus is lying to the right, propped on a pillow. It is the first known example for such a figure in the greek-speaking East before Roman times.¹⁴ The position and the bowl in its right hand are suggestive of the type used in reliefs of death feasts, in general it is “recalling the abstract rendering of figures on the lids of Etruscan sarcophagi”.¹⁵ Big parts of the figure are unfinished, much of the head (e.g. the chin, nose and parts of the left side of the skullcap) is destroyed. A groove, roughly chiseled into the head by a pointed tool, was interpreted for attaching a fillet, a diadem, or – more likely because of the wedge-shaped form of the groove – a wreath made of metal,¹⁶ like they were found in Macedonian tombs from the 4^th century B.C.¹⁷

In order to close the sarcophagus in the small burial chamber without a rack, the lid consists of two parts. One part of the lid with the upper part of the body of the figure was already fixed on the chest. After the funeral liturgy and the sepulture of the corpse the second part, which was deposed on the rock-cut bank beside the sarcophagus, was moved across the chest and the sarcophagus was closed.¹⁸

4.2. The statue of an Oriental

(İzmir Museum, Inv. 1084)
Furthermore, an almost life-sized statue of a man with Oriental clothing (fig. 11) was found in the burial chamber in front of the sarcophagus. Both feet are broken, the body itself is in good condition, the head is missing. The left arm crosses the chest and rests under the right arm. The man is wearing shoes, an anaxyrides, a knee-length sleeved garment belted around the waist and a tiara, of which the flaps are preserved at the shoulders and the neck. It has been speculated that the statue belonged to the figures of the roof ornamentation and was intially placed on the southeast corner of the roof, between two horse figures, but the finding spot and the preserved condition argue in favour of a original placement in the burial chamber and the gesture of the statue points to the interpretation as a servant or a guardian.¹⁹

4.3. Coffers

(all fragments İzmir Museum)
Twenty-four coffers adorned the panels of the ceiling of the peristasis.They were placed in a single row on all four sides of the peristasis – seven coffers on the north and south sides, five on the the east and west sides. Fragments of twenty-one coffers had been found, all with intensive traces of red, blue, yellow and brown colours. The north side depicts scenes from funerary games, including gymnastic agons and maybe a hippic competition. The coffer in the middle of the north side stands out (fig. 12). The central figure, bearded and dressed, crowns a naked contestant, who is standing on his right. On the left a third figure, possibly a trumpist, is following the event.²⁰ The coffers on the others sides show a Centauromachy. The Lapiths – with the exception of one naked man – are fully armed with helmets, armours, round shields and swords and wear high-belted chitoniskoi (fig. 13). The centaurs are wild and brutal, some of them fight with clubs. In style the reliefs are “costively classicising”.²¹ In motif some congruence can be found to the Bassai frieze and generally a Centauromachy is known in the 4^th century B.C. at Macedonian tombs and at the Mausoleum of Halikarnassus.²²

5. Roof sculpture

Preserved from the roof ornamentation are figures of horses, vases and liongriffins. On each corner a pair of horses facing one another was standing, a groom was perhaps set between them. Liongriffins, which are following the ideal of Persian liongriffins,²³ were antithetically grouped around globular vases along the four sides of the roof (fig. 14). All roof sculptures are partially unfinished.

Several fragments of human freestanding figures (two arm-fragments and a part of a face including remains of the left eye, left cheek, nose and upper lip), evidently parts of further sculptural decoration, were found at different spots around the Mausoleum.²⁴

6. Construction

6.1. Materials

While the rock-core of the pedestal was cut directly from the crystallizing limestone of a mountain ledge, the encasing blocks as well as the whole architecture of the upper floor consist of marble, probably of local provenance.

6.2. Masonry

The workings and the clamps in the rock-core, which were used for the attachment of the encasing blocks to the rock, supply exact information of the layering system of the pedestal. Up to the Doric entablature it comprises 19 rows of blocks. The marble blocks gave the impression that the ground level was massively layered in the style of a pseudo-isodome wall.²⁵

6.3. Dome construction

The burial-chamber was covered by a genuine barrel vault, which was built with a circular cross-section and a range of nearly 3,40 m.²⁶ The single vault-blocks were connected together and to the rock with clamps. Generally a burial-chamber with a barrel-vault can be deduced from the grave-type developed in the late 4^th century B.C. in Macedonia, which gained wide and quick circulation in the Hellenic world.²⁷

6.4. Techniques

A new technique – a “novum” for the early Hellenistic architecture - had been used at the Mausoleum of Belevi. While the encasing marble blocks of the pedestal were set with perfect capillary joints in front, their backs have a polygonal cutting and were roughly textured. The space between the backs of the blocks and the roughly polished rock-core was filled with hard mortar mixed with small rubbles and crushed stones (fig. 15).²⁸ This technique can be found all over the monument from the krepidoma up to the walls and it is certainly not part of a secondary building activity, but belongs to the period of construction (fig. 16. 17).

7. History

7.1. Date of its creation

Generally the architectural décor refers to a dating in the early 3^rd century B.C. The Corinthian capitals (fig. 18) show an uncanonical singular style (e.g. 4 Caules instead of 8) and are difficult to classify, but they have a partial accordance with the capitals from the Arsinoeion at Samothrace (299-270 B.C.) and the Laodice-Monument at Milet (259-253 B.C.). The palmette decorating the underside of the corners of the Doric cornice find parallels e.g. at the so-called Ptolemaion in Limyra (1^st half of the 3^rd century B.C.) and the temple of Athena in Priene (2^nd half of the 4^th century B.C.). The form of the Lesbian cymata (fig. 19) refers to the 4^th century B.C.²⁹

During the excavations from 1931 to 1935 a group of about 40 ceramic fragments were recovered. They were found at the lowest step of the krepidoma, on the west-hand side of the monument. Almost all the fragments can be dated between 350 and 300 B.C. Only two fragments, the foot of an amphore and the shoulder-fragment of a kantharos, date around 280 B.C. All the fragments are from utility pottery, probably used by the building craftsmen.³⁰

7.2. Events

For whom the Mausoleum was built remains unresolved, but its size and elaborate decoration suggest that it must have been erected for a prominent historical personality – probably from the late 4^th to early 3^rd century B.C. As owners have been discussed: Mentor of Rhodos, who died before 336 B.C., and his brother Memnon, who died in 333 B.C., but the style of the ornamental decoration, especially the form of the Corinthian capitals seem to be too early for the third quarter of the 4^th century B.C.³¹ The identification of the Mausoleum of Belevi as Lysimachos’ tomb is primarily constituted on historical arguments focused on his influence in Ionia after 301 B.C. by taking large areas from Antigonos I. Monophthalmos and on the rebuilding of Ephesos. The unfinished state of the Mausoleum and the cessation of work on the building were associated with the death of Lysimachos in the battle of Kouroupedion in 281 B.C. and the Seleucid takeover in Ionia. According to Pausanias and Appian Lysimachos was buried in the town Lysimacheia in the Thracian Chersonese in a monument called Lysimacheion.³² Even though there is no obliging evidence that the Mausoleum of Belevi was built as the tomb for Lysimachos, the date of the architectural decoration and the ceramic provide an obvious opportunity for this identification.³³

But in consideration of these uncertainties it has also been suggested that after a short second period of construction the empty tomb was used for the burial of Antiochos II, who died in Ephesos in 246 B.C.³⁴ But it is clear that all sculptural elements such as the liongriffins, the man with the Oriental dress from the burial chamber as well as the lid of the sarcophagus – all were combined with a Seleucid phase at the Mausoleum – belong to the original period of construction.

Confusion cause the two teeth found in the sarcophagus together with some other poor rests of human bones. According to the anthropological examination the teeth are said to derive from a 40 to 45 years old man.³⁵ Antiochos II. died at the age of 41.

7.3. Diachronic uses

Ceramics from the late 1^st century B.C. up to the late 1^st century A.C. found in the burial-chamber prove that the tomb was opened during Roman times.³⁶ It is not to decide, if the grave was robbed or used for a second sepulture.

8. The history of the excavation