The Harpy Tomb at Xanthus

Abstract

One hundred years ago, in 1842, the Lycian Marbles were exhibited for the first time in the British Museum. Sir Charles Fellows had discovered them at Xanthus, the capital of Lycia, and succeeded in procuring them for the Trustees of the British Museum. Since that time, the Lycian Marbles have formed one of the main parts of the collection of Greek sculpture in London. But their London home seems to have had the strange effect of making them more and more reticent: these Lycian sculptures have indeed been extremely successful in withstanding all attempts at explaining them or even understanding them. In spite of the immense sensation caused at the time of their arrival in England and all through the nineteenth century, there is nobody who can even nowadays assign to any of them an accurate date or supply an adequate commentary.The Harpy Tomb provides us with an excellent example for these (I admit) rather sweeping statements. Its place was in the middle of the Archaic Room of the British Museum. Everybody walked round it, looked at it, tried to explain it, and gave it up. Much has been written about it during these last hundred years, but the only solutions offered were of a vague mythological or symbolic character. However, I believe the time has come to attempt an explanation from a different angle altogether. It seems hopeless to continue on the well-trodden track, and to consider it simply as a piece of architecture or a piece of sculpture, in which we try to puzzle out the religious views expressed in the reliefs. In the interpretation offered in this paper, it is regarded primarily as the tomb or heroön of a certain family and as a monument of a certain historical character.