Nereid Monument

Nereid Monument
(Tomb of Arbinas)

The reconstructed façade of the monument in the British Museum

Reconstitution of the original Nereid Monument, originally set on a high base

Xanthos

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Original location of the Nereid Monument, in Xanthos, Lycia, modern Turkey

The Nereid Monument is a sculptured tomb from Xanthos in Lycia (then part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire), close to present-day Fethiye in Mugla Province, Turkey. It took the form of a Greek temple on top of a base decorated with sculpted friezes, and is thought to have been built in the early fourth century BC (circa 390 BC) as a tomb for Arbinas (Lycian: Erbbina, or Erbinna), the Xanthian dynast who ruled western Lycia under the Achaemenid Empire.^[1]

The tomb is thought to have stood until the Byzantine era before falling into ruin. The ruins were rediscovered by British traveller Charles Fellows in the early 1840s. Fellows had them shipped to the British Museum, where some of them have been reconstructed to show what the east façade of the monument would have looked like.

According to Melanie Michailidis, though bearing a "Greek appearance", the Nereid Monument, the Harpy Tomb and the Tomb of Payava were built in accordance with main Zoroastrian criteria "by being composed of thick stone, raised on plinths off the ground, and having single windowless chambers".^[2] The Nereid Monument was the main inspiration for the famous Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.^[3]