XVI.—The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. A new Restoration

Abstract

It is with unfeigned hesitation that I venture to bring forward a new restoration of the Halicarnassian Mausoleum. For more than a century the form of this celebrated monument has been the enigma of architectural antiquaries, and down to the present time no solution has received so unanimous an assent as to be deemed conclusive. It is not indeed surprising that the earlier theories, those of Caylus, Choiseul-Groufner, Canina, Texier, and others, should have been discordant, and to most minds unsatisfactory; for they were founded solely on the notices of the building found in ancient authors, and these notices are brief, desultory, sometimes veiled in figurative language, and sometimes to all appearance contradictory to each other, if not to themselves. Even the ingenious and tasteful designs of the late Professor Cockerell and Mr. Edward Falkener were prepared in ignorance of any material remains beyond the few slabs of sculptured frieze procured in 1846 by Sir Stratford Canning from the citadel of Budrum. But when at length it was resolved to supplement theory by fact, and to procure monumental in addition to literary evidence, when the resoures of the British Government were liberally placed at the disposal of an eminent archaeologist, to excavate the whole site of the Mausoleum, and bring to England all the remains of its architecture or sculpture which could illustrate its construction, it might have been expected that the mists of uncertainty would have disappeared in a flood of light. But very different has been the event.