This miniature Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) was erected as the final resting place of Samuel Merritt (1822–1890), an early landowner in Oakland, CA, and a noted physician. The tomb of King Mausolus (377–353 BCE) and his wife/sister Artemisia II of Caria (d. 350 BCE) was erected c. 353 and 350 BCE in Bodrum, Turkey, and was described in the writings of the Roman historian Pliny the Elder (23-79 ACE). The British Museum dispatched archaeologist Charles Thomas Newton (1816-1894) who excavated the Bodrum site in the 1850s and made hypothetical reconstructions of the mausoleum based on his findings. Newton's reconstructions influenced subsequent generations of Beaux-Arts-trained architects interested in quoting antique funerary precedents.

PCAD id: 17546