Nereid Monument

The Nereid Monument is a sculptured tomb in the form of a Greek temple on top of a base decorated with sculpted friezes. The temple had columns on each side and stood elevated on a substantial podium, decorated with two friezes.

There are also reliefs on the architrave, the inner chamber of temple walls, and in the pediment. There were also many large free-standing sculptures between each pair of primary columns.

The Nereid Monument originally stood in Xanthos, which was the name of a city in ancient Lycia, the site of present-day Kınık, Turkey.

Lycia was a geopolitical region in Anatolia known to history since the records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age.

The Tomb was built in the early fourth century BC as a tomb for Arbinas, who belonged to the Xanthian dynast who ruled western Lycia at the time.

Although Arbinas ruled Lycia as part of the Persian Empire, the monument is built in a Greek style, influenced by the Ionic temples of the Athenian Acropolis.

The rich narrative sculptures on the monument portray Arbinas in various ways, combining Greek and Persian aspects.

The tomb is thought to have stood until the Byzantine era before falling into ruin. A British archaeologist rediscovered the ruins in the early 1840s.

He then had them shipped to the British Museum, where some of them have been reconstructed to show the east façade of the monument.

The Museum also houses many other parts of the memorial as separate exhibits.

Nereids

The Nereid Monument included many large free-standing sculptures, including Nereids between each pair of primary columns.

Nereids are sea nymphs or female spirits of sea waters according to Greek mythology.

The monument is now named after these life-size female figures in wind-blown drapery, identified as Nereids.

They are classified as sea-nymphs because various sculpted sea creatures were found under their feet, including dolphins, a cuttlefish, and a sea-gull. Nereids symbolized everything beautiful and kind about the sea.

Xanthos

Xanthos was a chief city-state of the Lycians, an indigenous people of southwestern Anatolia, present-day Turkey.

Xanthos’ fortunes were tied to Lycia’s as Lycia changed sides during the Greco-Persian Wars.

Archaeological digs demonstrate that Xanthos was destroyed in approximately 475 BC-470 BC, or about 100 years before the Nereid Monument, whether this was done by the Athenians or by the Persians is open to debate.

As the center of ancient Lycia and the site of its most extensive antiquities, Xanthos has many important artifacts that were discovered in the city.

Two tombs, the Nereid Monument and the Tomb of Payava are now exhibited in the British Museum.

Lycia

Lycia, in Southern Anatolia, fought for the Persians in the Persian Wars. Still, on the defeat of the Persians by the Greeks, it moved back and forth in alliances between the Athenian Empire and the Persians.

It then fell under Macedonian hegemony upon the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Great.

Following an influx of Greek speakers and the sparsity of the remaining Lycian speakers, Lycia was rapidly Hellenized under the Macedonians, and the Lycian language disappeared from inscriptions and coinage.

Title: Nereid Monument
Date: 390BC-380BC (circa)
Culture: Classical Greek
Findspot: Present-day Fethiye in Mugla Province, Turkey
Materials: Marble
Acquisition: 1848
Museum: The British Museum