In August 2010, Turkey was shocked once again by the news that tomb raiders had discovered and largely destroyed a tomb chamber in Milas (ancient Mylasa). It was soon recognized as one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of recent years, of the same order of magnitude as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Questions persist as to how looters could have carried out their destructive excavations in the midst of downtown Milas for two years without being disturbed, and how the tomb chamber—18 m below the surface—could be covertly penetrated. During the looting activities, not only did all movable grave goods disappear, but also the integrity of the tomb’s architecture was irretrievably lost. The tomb chamber suffered considerable damage when it was filled with water to cool down the engines that drove the machinery used to drill through the ca. 2 m thick marble walls. One of the arrested tomb raiders accused his robber fellows of stealing a 60 cm tall gold statuette. Seven stolen marble statuettes were later found in Denizli, while a golden wreath appeared in Edinburgh. This wreath has since been repatriated.[1]
The ashlar-built podium topped by a single column that sits above the tomb—known as Uzunyuva, or (high nest) in common parlance—was previously thought to be the remains of a Roman temple. Shortly before the discovery of the tomb chamber, Frank Rumscheid had suggested that the Uzunyuva podium was not a Roman temple, but rather that it marked an unfinished tomb of Mausolus.[2]
The tomb chamber of “Hecatomnus” was registered on the tentative UNESCO World Heritage List in 2012.[3] The brothers Cengiz Işık and Fahri Işık, Adnan Diler, and Abuzer Kızıl were entrusted with the publication of the monument. A richly illustrated volume with English/Turkish articles focusing on the tomb architecture, the sarcophagus, and the wall paintings has recently appeared.[4]
The book under review appears as an independent monograph, although initially it was not conceived of as standalone volume (the author speaks of his “Aufsatz,” p. XV). Its length, with 80 text pages excluding the trilingual summaries, is indeed suitable for a longer article, similar to its Turkish/English version in the abovementioned volume.[5]
The book begins, oddly, with an appendix on the preservation and condition of the wall paintings by Christoph Merzenich. There follows the description of the wall paintings, which constitutes the greatest portion of the text. Chapter A treats the large-scale paintings on both lunettes, and Chapter B deals with the continuous friezes with small-scale figures. Chapter C analyses the objects represented in the paintings. Chapter D describes the ornamental friezes. Chapter E recapitulates the paintings addressing stylistic considerations. Chapter F, with an extended trilingual summary in English, German and Turkish, concludes the book. The text is illustrated by 20 color plates and three separate folded supplements.
Merzenich proposes that the corbel-vaulted tomb chamber was probably painted entirely in the a secco technique (4). The vaulted ceiling was covered with iron oxide red and decorated with golden dots, probably meant to represent stars, while the dominant color on the walls was green (malachite), of which only traces remain. A 27.5 cm high continuous frieze ran around all four walls, while both lunettes depicted scenes with large-scale figures. The compositions depicted in the lunettes are mirror images of each other: seated couples are accompanied by their assistants. Following the principle of isocephaly, the heads of all figures are rendered at the same height. The seated figures are thus twice as big as the standing ones. Both couples are shown in different postures, clothing and skin color. In the eastern lunette, the man sitting on a gilded and cushioned diphros, holding a golden scepter between his legs and wearing oriental headgear with a golden wreath, is identified as Hecatomnus, while the woman sitting next to him would be his wife, Ada.
According to Işık, Hecatomnus, who is depicted as if he is in conversation, is not addressing his wife, but rather Mausolus in the opposite, western lunette, who sits on a chair with a backrest and holds a golden scepter in an upright position. The headgear of both men is a soft oriental cap. The headgear of Mausolus is brown and points forward (not shown in the drawing on pl. 4,4) while Hecatomnus’s headgear is white and rounded at the top. Traces of gilding show that both men wore gold-leaf wreaths as part of their headdresses. Işık observes that both seated women are also shown in different postures: Ada in the eastern lunette is tightly wrapped in her mantle, as is suitable for an elderly woman, while her counterpart in the western lunette, Artemisia, the wife of Mausolus, is lifting her veil in the gesture common to a young wife. Işık notes the dark brown skin of Hecatomnus and Ada, which contrast with the white skin of the attendant figures and that of Mausolus and Artemisia, but does not offer an interpretation.
The differences in postures and clothing styles convey, according to Işık, that these are two couples from different generations, while the golden wreaths and scepters characterized the two men as rulers, father and son, Hecatomnus and Mausolus. Işık interprets the lunette paintings as a single continuous audience scene representing the changeover of power between the old and the young rulers. Drawing parallels with the audience scenes from the Heroön in Trysa and the Nereid Monument, Işık shows that the iconography of these paintings is based on the Achaemenid/Lycian tradition (22–24). According to Işık this dynastic reunion reappears in the banquet scene on the main side of the sarcophagus in an extended version that includes other adults and children as well as the double throne scene on the narrow, left side (25–26).
The narrow continuous frieze running around the chamber, which on the eastern and western walls is situated just below the large-scale figures in the lunettes, has unfortunately been much impacted by the water. The colors and contours of the figures are largely blurred. Nevertheless, thanks to ultraviolet photography, Işık was able to restore almost all the figures. On the east, north, and south walls the frieze depicts an Amazonomachy, and on the north and west walls, a Centauromachy. These mythological themes are also represented in the relief decoration of the Mausoleion and the Heroön at Trysa, but are also common on funerary and sacral monuments of the 4th century BC. Işık convincingly identifies the known figure types and combat schemes and observes that the combating heroes were programmatically positioned to link them with the dignitaries in the lunettes: below Hecatomnus, Achilles is fighting against Penthesileia, while Theseus is fighting against the Centaurs below Mausolus.
Comparanda for stylistic analyses are drawn mostly from relief sculpture. According to Işık, the style of the paintings confirms the date 377/376 BC as terminus ante quem, the year of the death of Hecatomnus. Lacking a proper discussion, this conclusion does not appear to be well-founded, and is open to discussion.
As was noted above, after its discovery the Uzunvuya tomb was immediately connected with Hecatomnus in popular web publications and in several passing references by scholars.[6] Işık, however, argues more decisively for this identification, although hard evidence is still lacking. On the other hand, there are scholars who place the style of the building and the sarcophagus in the middle of 4th century BC.[7] Rumscheid recently proposed an alternative identification of the tomb owner as Idrieus, the brother of Mausolus. He argues that the unfinished state of the tomb, in his opinion, better fits the historical context of the post-Mausoleion period. When Artemisia died in 351 BC, after having completed the Mausoleion, her successor Idrieus would have aimed to surpass the grandeur of the Mausoleion with a larger tomb monument in Mylasa which, however, remained incomplete when he died in 344 BC and his sister-wife Ada lost her political power.[8] The epigraphically attested epithet of Idrieus as Μυλασεύς explains, according to Rumscheid, why Idrieus chose Mylasa for his tomb. Because both publications were written simultaneously, Işık and Rumscheid could not consider each other´s contrary opinions on the identification of the tomb owner. It remains, therefore, to be seen how this controversy will be discussed in future studies and how Rumscheid will identify the persons represented in the wall paintings and the reliefs of the sarcophagus within his historical interpretation.
The book leaves an ambivalent impression. It provides invaluable access to this extraordinary monument with fully referenced descriptions and illustrations. This volume will therefore be of great benefit not only for scholars of classical archaeology, but also for a diverse range of researchers. On the other hand, there are a couple of shortcomings which make the use of the book difficult. A schematic plan of the tomb chamber with the positioning of the wall paintings would have been a tremendous help for gaining an overview of the image layout. In addition, higher quality photographs would have allowed us to better understand the descriptions and the polychromy. It is not explained why the friezes of the southern and northern walls are only illustrated in ultraviolet photos (fold supplement 2) and why some figures are illustrated twice (pl. 4,1–2) or even thrice (pl. 7,1–3; 8, 1–3).
The reader also gets irritated by other inconsistencies: firstly, one wonders why a preliminary report, drafted by Christoph Merzenich after a one-day visual examination of the paintings in 2010, opens the book. Only in the Turkish version of the Acknowledgments (XIV) does the reader learn that Merzenich’s long-term conservation proposal was not approved by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The urgently needed conservation work was then entrusted to “Italian hands.”[9] Probably because of this complicated situation, the book contains hardly any information on colors, pigments, painting style and technique.
The reader feels disoriented by trilingual summaries in Turkish, English and German, since they differ in length and content. Also, inconsistencies in spelling like Baschlik and Başlik (66), numerous word repetitions like “younger enthroned younger figure” (87) and poor wording like “curls of clothing” (91) indicate the weakness of the editorial work, which is unexpected in a renowned series like “Asia Minor Studien.”
Işık surely deserves thanks for opening up the wall paintings of the Uzunyuva tomb monument for further research. There may be upcoming controversial discussions on the interpretation of the paintings and the owner of the tomb.
Notes
[1] “Golden Crown of Hecatomnus to be Returned,” Hurriyet Daily News, December 30, 2017.
[2] F. Rumscheid, “Maussollos and the ‘Uzun Yuva’ in Mylasa: An Unfinished Proto-Maussolleion at the Heart of a New Urban Centre?,” in: J.-M. Carbon and R. van Bremen (ed.), Hellenistic Karia. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Hellenistic Karia, Oxford, 29 June-2 July 2006 (Bordeaux 2010) 69–121.
[3] “Mausoleum and Sacred Area of Hecatomnus” UNESCO.org.
[4] A. Diler (ed.), Mylasa Uzunyuva Hekatomneionu (Istanbul 2020) (not accessible to the reviewer).
[5] C. Işık, “Hekatomneion Mezar Anıtının Duvar Resimleri: Figür Tipleri, Kompozisyon, İkonografi ve Stil Üzerine Gözlemler,” in: A. Diler (ed.), Mylasa Uzunyuva Hekatomneion`u (Istanbul 2021).
[6] For example, M. Brunwasser, “Top 10 Discoveries of 2010”, Archaeology, October 17, 2012; and K. Konuk, “Coinage and Identities under the Hekatomnids,” in: O. Henry (ed.), 4th Century Karia: Defining a Karian Identity under the Hekatomnids. Varia Anatolica XXVIII (Paris 2013) 111–112.
[7] A. Herda, “Greek (and Our) Views on the Karians,” in: A. Mouton et al. (ed.), Luwian Identities: Culture, Language, and Religion between Anatolia and the Aegean (Leiden 2013) 457 note 179.
[8] F. Rumscheid, “Mylasa,” in: A. Belgin-Henry and O. Henry (ed.), The Carians. From Seafearer to City Builders (Istanbul 2020) 329; idem, “Hekatomnidengräber in Halikarnassos und in Mylasa: Voraussetzungen und Folgen,” in: Ch. Berns and C. Huguenot (ed.), Griechische Monumentalgräber. Regionale Muster und ihre Rezeption im ägäischen Raum in klassischer und hellenistischer Zeit (Hamburg 2020) 186.
[9] The Italian team surveyed the monument in 2013: A. Frascari and A. Mancuso, “Milas, Turkey: Cancelling the Town to Extract the Monument? The Case of the Hekatomnos’ Tomb,” in: G. Verdiani et al. (ed.), Proceedings of the AACC Workshop“State of Knowledge in the Digital Age” Valencia 18-20 May 2015 (Valencia 2015) 77. Conservation work on the wall paintings is being carried out by the team of the Directorate for Restoration in Istanbul: Ö. Toprak and A. O. Avşar, “Mezar Odası ve Duvar Resimlerinde Koruma Çalışmaları,” in: A. Diler (ed.), op.cit. note 5.