Mausolus (died 353/352 BCE) was a Persian satrap (governor), though virtually an independent ruler, of Caria, in southwestern Anatolia, from 377/376 to 353 BCE. He is best known from the name of his monumental tomb, the so-called Mausoleum—considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World—a word now used to designate any large and imposing burial structure.
Is there a name for this phenomenon? Like how “algorithm” is just the westernized spelling of of al-Khwarizmi or “guy” comes from Guy Fawkes.
I been there! There’s like. A bunch of rocks around. Some random tomb. That was 25 years ago. I’m sure it’s still basically that. I don’t remember the whole story, but, apparently during the crusades the crusaders took the mausoleum apart and built a castle like three kilometers away on a cliff overlooking the sea, which makes sense, but that is not all because that was one of the original wonders of the world, and Turkey has a bunch of’em, one of them being the Mausoleum, another being the Temple of Artemis, not a long ride from there (Izmir? or something like that, maybe Cas or something, Turks be weird with their names my brothers and sisters) and that, too, is basically just a pile of rubble.
Famous rubble. But rubble.
Edit: I saw the most gigantic lizard, and I thought it was part of Artemis’ temple, and I was like, holy shit, wow, look at that, them damn clever Greeks (sic!), and then it RAN AWAY and I was like HOLY SHIT IT RAN AWAY! Then some dude tried to sell me antique coins. I’m pretty sure they were fake, but even back then I had a good sense of value, and I think some of them might actually have been real. Mom din’t raise no dummy tho’, and I left, only to be harassed by dogs. Then I went to some place where there’s been like a natural gas deposit that is on fire and has been for like thousands of years, it’s like “dragon smoke”, we call it where I’m from, like it’s a clear tiny fire that just springs out of the rock and it is very weird, it’s like a gently sloping… slope, but hilly and rocky, and it is absolutely beautiful like, everything is so dry and you can smell that dryness and the herbs and all the odd plants that live in that area, and it is so real, and so pure, but anyway, that’s what I did. I love Turkey.
Another time 25 years later I lived in a tent on the Black Sea coast in Northern Turkey for three months but I had to leave for surgery, buy me a beer and I’ll tell you parts about it!
Sounds like a memorable trip!
Traveling is not the same anymore. I am supremely grateful I had the opportunity to see the world before it was completely digested by capitalism and the lowest common global denominator culture that rules the planet today. Shit was real back then like you wouldn’t find today unless you went truly off the grid…
Yeah, it’s basically a big hole in the ground, with some bits of ancient columns scattered about. The Temple of Artemis is a bit of bog with a couple of columns standing up - they have been restored.
The wife and I have visited 5 of the 7 Wonders sites. The statue of Zeus is in our future at some point. I’m told that all there is is a replica in the middle of a roundabout.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, sadly, will never be a place we go. For one, nobody knows where it precisely is. For another, it’s in Iraq, and we’re not going anywhere where you need a flak jacket and a security team just to look for an Ancient Wonder that isn’t there any more.
It is believed to be, with a fair degree of certainty, in Nineveh. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, in my mind, is like saying, the Great Wall of China. China is a big place.
And I can almost feel it, smell it. Imagine, on the shores of the Tigris (the ancient flow, not the modern one), by some means they hoisted water up the terraces of either the Ziggurat itself, or at an adjoining building. They classically sometimes call it Semirami’s Hanging Gardens, and I like to believe she was a queen or a queen-like figure that had some considerable power in her own right, and issued the order to build a terraced garden overlooking the (at that time, fairly green) desert, filled with flowers and plants and trees and animals, and she tended to her garden lovingly. I get this because I have met some of these ladies in my life, among them most distinguishedly my own mother, who lived for her gardens, and enjoyed them so much, and wanted everyone to enjoy them (I know how these Ladies function on a base level). She must have been very well off and in a position of royal or semi-royal power, and what she created was cited across Near Asia for its beauty and cunning engineering.
I like to believe something like that. Also I do not doubt for a fucking SECOND that it was real. If we had no evidence of the pyramids, and what little material survived told us about them, I’d be incredulous. But a royal garden, unsurpassed in beauty and exoticity, I can very easily see that, especially for these desert folk who would not have seen anything like that traveling all across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa (except the deepest parts, but in any case, being based in Mesopotamia at that time would still have been an arid existence for travelers, traders, soldiers and everyone else departing the river deltas).
I can go on for hours about this, I have a clue. Of course, we can but dream of the things thousands of years ago our ancestors saw and loved…