Nereid Monument: A Lycian Dynastic Tomb at Xanthos
Site at a Glance
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- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Classical
- Eras represented
- Classical
- Civilizations
- Achaemenid
- Site type
- Burial
- Remains
- Tomb
On this page15 sections
History
The Nereid Monument is a sculptured tomb at ancient Xanthos near Kınık in Türkiye, built by the Lycians around 390–380 BC in the early fourth century BC. Its Greek temple-shaped design and richly carved imagery commemorated Arbinas, a Lycian dynast who ruled western Lycia within the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The monument combines Ionic architectural forms with Persian and Lycian expressions of authority, reflecting the political world in which local rulers governed their territories under Persian imperial control.
Xanthos under Persian rule
Xanthos was a principal city-state of the Lycians, an indigenous people of southwestern Anatolia. The Persian commander Harpagus conquered Lycia for the Achaemenid Empire around 540 BC. During much of the fifth century BC, the region also paid contributions to the Athenian maritime empire and land tax to the Persians, placing Xanthos within competing systems of power.
A fire around 470 BC destroyed wooden tombs and temples at Xanthos. The destruction was probably connected with an attack on the sacred citadel by the Athenian commander Cimon, carried out after the Persian destruction of Athens and its allies, including the Lycians, in 480 BC. Under the Xanthian dynast Kuprilli, the damaged buildings were rebuilt in stone.
The dynasty of Arbinas
Kuprilli’s grandson Kheriga succeeded him around 440 BC. Kheriga’s brother Kherei probably followed him around 410 BC. Around 390 BC, Kheriga’s son Arbinas took Xanthos and other Lycian cities by force to reclaim his dynastic birthright. He then ruled western Lycia from Xanthos and died around 370 BC. The monument was probably erected for him during this period of restored dynastic authority.
Although Arbinas remained within the Persian imperial system, the tomb’s appearance drew on the Ionic temples of the Athenian Acropolis. Its political imagery presents him in several forms, including as a ruler dressed in Persian style. The monument has been identified as the principal inspiration for the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Its arrangement has also been considered in relation to funerary practices associated with Zoroastrianism, despite its strongly Greek architectural appearance.
Destruction, rediscovery, and reconstruction
The tomb probably stood until the Byzantine era, when local Christians dismantled it for its stone and metal. Some elements were likely reused as spolia, architectural pieces taken from an earlier structure for use in a later building. The monument then became a ruin.
Expeditions led by the British archaeologist and traveller Charles Fellows rediscovered the ruins in the early 1840s, with George Scharf among the participants. Fellows first attributed the tomb to Harpagus and assigned it to the sixth century BC. Recognition of its architectural and sculptural style later established a date around 390–380 BC and connected it with Arbinas.
Fellows arranged for the surviving remains and sculptures to be shipped to the British Museum. Because he did not make detailed records of the locations where the pieces were found, reconstruction relied on expedition drawings, marks on the stones, and the composition and style of the sculptures. The east façade was reconstructed in 1969, and part of the monument is presented in Room 17 of the museum. The sculptural program has been interpreted through scenes of military victory, dynastic succession, courtly life, and religious ceremony.
Remains
The Nereid Monument was formed as a Greek temple-shaped tomb on a substantial limestone podium measuring approximately 6 by 10 metres. Carefully dressed limestone blocks created the raised base. Above it stood a central cella, the enclosed chamber of a classical temple, surrounded on all four sides by Ionic columns. Four columns marked each of the east and west sides, while six stood along both the north and south sides. Free-standing female sculptures occupied spaces between pairs of the principal columns.
The podium and its friezes
Lower podium frieze
The podium carried two marble friezes, arranged with masonry courses between them to create a tall and balanced composition. The deeper lower frieze consisted of 22 blocks, of which seven are lost or survive only in fragments. Its surviving panels show heroic combat scenes without a single continuous narrative. Male soldiers appear mainly in Greek clothing and armour, and the scenes include no clearly foreign opponents such as Amazons or centaurs.
Upper podium frieze
The upper frieze also comprised 22 blocks, with three lost. All four sides depict the siege of a city, using crenellated defensive architecture characteristic of Lycia. Heavily armed hoplites, the infantrymen of the ancient Greek world, fight alongside archers, while prisoners are led away and besiegers climb walls by ladders. Arbinas appears in Persian-style settings, including a scene in which he sits beneath a parasol with his feet resting on a footstool.
In the original arrangement, two courses of masonry separated the lower frieze from the ground, and two more separated it from the shallower upper frieze. The British Museum reconstruction instead places both friezes directly above a single layer of blocks, producing a different relationship between the sculptural bands and the podium.
The cella, architrave, and pediments
Architrave frieze
The architrave, the horizontal beam above the columns, carried a frieze carved in a simpler and more naive style than the two podium bands. Its scenes include fighting, a boar hunt, figures receiving or carrying offerings, and preparations for a banquet.
Cella wall frieze
Another marble frieze ran along the upper exterior of the cella walls. The columns and free-standing sculptures partly screened it from view. Its imagery centres on ritual offerings and banquets. Two figures recline on separate couches, one probably Arbinas and the other possibly his son. Arbinas has the hair and beard associated with Persian or Assyrian kings and holds a Persian drinking horn.
Pediment reliefs
The cella walls, architrave, and pediments were decorated with reliefs. Each triangular pediment, the gable end above a temple façade, carried a relief rather than the fully rounded sculptural group common on many contemporary Greek buildings. The east pediment shows Arbinas and his wife seated in still poses. Smaller figures are thought to represent the children of the ruling family, accompanied by a dog. Ian Jenkins has proposed an artistic connection between this scene and the depiction of Zeus and Hera on the east frieze of the Parthenon.
Only one of the two panels that formed the west pediment survives. Its subject differs from the composed family scene on the east, showing soldiers in motion during battle.
Free-standing sculptures
Female figures between the columns
Eleven life-size female sculptures survive from the spaces between the columns. They are generally identified as Nereids, sea nymphs in Greek mythology, because sea creatures were carved beneath the feet of seven figures. These creatures include dolphins, a cuttlefish, and a bird that may be a seagull. The statues are heavily damaged and have lost their heads and hands, but their carved drapery and movement remain highly accomplished.
The eleven figures would have occupied the spaces between the columns on the east and west sides and three spaces on the north side. Ian Jenkins has suggested that the south side may never have held comparable sculptures. Their identification as Nereids remains disputed. Thurstan Robinson argued that the interpretation imposes a Greek perspective on Lycian sculpture and proposed that the figures might instead be eliyãna, Lycian freshwater nymphs associated with freshwater sources and mentioned by the Letoon trilingual inscription, found several kilometres south of the monument.
Acroteria
Other free-standing sculptures served as acroteria, sculptural ornaments placed at the corners and apex of a pediment. The two principal surviving examples each consist of a young man and a young woman. They have been interpreted in several ways, including Castor and Pollux carrying off the daughters of Leukippos, the Nereid Thetis being carried away by Peleus, or episodes from the exploits of Herakles.
