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 FROM THE EDITOR

Notre-Dame de Paris is one of the most famous Gothic

cathedrals in the world. Back in 2017, History magazine covered the icon’s
repeated “resurrections” over the centuries. After a devastating fire in 2019, this
cathedral is undergoing another rise from the ashes, and National Geographic
had an insider’s view of the restoration. Photographer Tomas van Houtryve
shot an amazing story for the magazine and website, and I interviewed him for
an Overheard at National Geographic podcast episode about the cathedral.

What most captured my imagination from our conversation was how the
fire revealed something hidden: stonemasons’ marks. Into every block they
cut, medieval stonemasons chiseled a unique logo. These marks were used to
calculate their pay, but they also give historians a way to track who worked at a
site and if their craft is present at other cathedrals.

Often when telling the stories of these glorious buildings, the focus is on the
big names—the men who commissioned them, the architects who designed
them, and the artists who decorated them. Their stories are easier to tell; their
lives better documented. Much harder to access are the stories of the regular
folks who built the soaring cathedrals. These marks provide rare insight into
their lives and contributions to some of the most beautiful buildings on Earth.

Amy Briggs, Executive Editor

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 1

 EXPLORE ANCIENT
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W I T H A N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C E X P E RT

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when you’re traveling alongside a National Geographic Expert. You’ll gain insight from archaeologists
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 VOL. 8 NO. 5

TRANSFER OF POWER
Appearing as the god Osiris,
Tutankhamun (left) faces his successor,
Aye, in a mural on the walls of the burial
chamber of Tut’s tomb, which was
discovered in November 1922.

Features Departments

22 King Tut’s Unsolved Mysteries 6 NEWS

After laying undisturbed for millennia, King Tut’s tomb gave insight For centuries, Oregon locals spoke
into Egypt’s 18th dynasty when it was discovered 100 years ago, but of a mysterious shipwreck on
archaeologists know there is still a lot left to learn about the boy king. its rocky coast. A June 2022 excavation
confirmed tales of the “Beeswax Wreck.”

38 It’s a Wonderful Afterlife 10 PROFILES

King Mausolus of Halicarnassus began building himself an enormous tomb The Lone Woman of San Nicolas
right in the middle of his capital city around 350 b.c. The structure was so Island mystified California
magnificent it became one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. in the 1850s and provoked larger questions
about Spanish colonization of the region.

50 Splendor of Herodium 14 DAILY LIFE

Just before Jesus’ birth, King Herod built an extravagant palace in the Corks started popping when
arid badlands near Bethlehem. A luxury home cum fortress, Herodium vintners in Champagne realized
epitomized the Roman decadence that so many of his subjects despised. the delights of sparkling wine in the 1600s.
The world has been celebrating ever since.

62 Reaching New Heights 18 MILESTONES

Starting in the late 1100s, vaulted ceilings rose higher, stained glass windows The Captain Hall’s death during the
stretched taller, and Gothic cathedrals soared across Europe, dominating doomed 1871-73 Polaris expedition
skylines from England to Italy with their glory. sparked accusations of plots and poison as
the ship struggled to reach the North Pole.

78 Love in the Time of Austen 92 DISCOVERIES

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Built during Bagan’s golden age,
Jane Austen’s novels are full of juicy insights thousands of Buddhist temples
into how the gentry flirted, courted, and have graced a plain in Myanmar for
coupled in Regency-era England. centuries, withstanding the forces of
Kublai Khan and the ravages of time.
PORTABLE DESK USED BY JANE AUSTEN, TOGETHER WITH HER GLASSES
AND GLASSES CASE. BRITISH LIBRARY, LONDON
 EXECUTIVE EDITOR AMY E. BRIGGS

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 NEWS
GALLEON TIMBERS RESTED IN A
SEA CAVE FOR CENTURIES NEAR
MANZANITA, OREGON, BEFORE
BEING REMOVED IN A DANGEROUS
RECOVERY MISSION IN JUNE 2022.
BALAZS GARDI
LOCAL LEGEND
Spanish Galleon Wreck
Found on Oregon Coast
Years of sleuthing by scientists and beachcombers led to the
location and recovery of Oregon’s mysterious “Beeswax Wreck.”
T
imbers from the
wreck of a 17th-cen-
tury Spanish galleon
were discovered in a
sea cave on Oregon’s northern
coast. In June 2022 remains of
the hull were removed from
sea caves near Manzanita in
a risky emergency recovery
6 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
mission involving archaeol-
ogists, law enforcement, and
search-and-rescue teams.“I’m
impressed and relieved,” says
Scott Williams, an archaeolo-
gist with the Washington State
Department of Transportation
and president of the Maritime
Archaeology Society (MAS),
an all-volunteer group that
spearheaded a 15-year search
for the shipwreck.
The dozen timbers are be-
lieved to be pieces of the Santo
Cristo de Burgos, a Spanish
trading vessel known as a Ma-
nila galleon, which was sailing
from the Philippines to Mexico
in 1693 when it vanished, most
likely wrecking on what is now
Oregon’s coast. Its cargo in-
cluded Chinese silk, porcelain,
and blocks of beeswax.
The Mexico-Manila route
was run by Spain from the
16th to the 19th centuries,
and despite the inevitable
loss of wooden vessels cross-
ing the Pacific in this period,
remarkably few confirmed
Manila galleon shipwrecks
have been found. Only three
are known from the west coast
of the Americas (with one each
in Oregon, California, and Baja
Mexico), and no surviving hull
remains have been discovered
until now.
 THE MANILA-MEXICO trade route was plied by galleons, three- (sometimes four-) masted
ships with a high stern. The galleon’s design was European, but as the 17th century proceed-
ed, its construction was increasingly “offshored” by the Spanish to the Philippines. Shipyards
near Manila produced many galleons for the route. An abundant local supply of high-quality
hardwood timber ensured vessels of great durability for the rigors of the Pacific crossing.

A 17TH-CENTURY SPANISH GALLEON (ABOVE) IN A 1620 DUTCH PAINTING BY CORNELIS VERBEECK HISTORIC IMAGES/ALAMY

Signs and Stories
The Santo Cristo wreck is bet-
ter known along the Oregon
coast as the legendary Bees-
wax Wreck, a moniker derived
from blocks of beeswax that
washed ashore for centuries
and were traded by local Na-
tive American tribes and later
Anglo-European settlers.
There were other clues that
a shipwreck lay hidden some-
where offshore, from bits of
blue-and-white porcelain to
large pieces of wood tossed up
on the rocks. A section of the
upper deck of a wooden ship
was visible at the mouth of
a river near Manzanita until
about the 1920s. Oral histories
from the area’s Indigenous
tribes tell of a foreign ship
that wrecked long ago, with
a crew that came ashore and
met varying fates.
As more settlers came to
this dramatic, craggy coast,
they embroidered Native
American accounts with in-
creasingly fantastic tales of
hidden riches. By the late 19th
century, legends of treasure
and galleons appeared reg-
ularly in Oregon newspa-
pers. Those reports caught
the attention of filmmak-
er Steven Spielberg and
likely inspired his idea
for the 1985 film The
Goonies, a cult tale of
treasure-seeking kids and a
treasure-laden pirate ship on
Oregon’s Pacific coast.
But for all the talk of trea-
sure, there were two ques-
tions: Where—and what—
exactly was the Beeswax
Wreck?
Secrets From a Tsunami
In the mid-2000s a group of
researchers and community
members including Williams
decided to answer that ques-
tion, eventually forming the
MAS. They studied thou-
sands of pieces of Chinese
porcelain collected by beach-
combers and determined they
were from the Kangxi period
(1661-1722).
These, and the Asian
beeswax with Spanish
markings, led them to
PIECES OF BEESWAX, SUCH AS THIS
ONE, FILLED THE CARGO OF THE
SANTO CRISTO DE BURGOS GALLEON.
BALAZS GARDI

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 7

 NEWS

THE MANILA GALLEONS ferried Chinese porcelain, spices, and silk from the Spanish colony of the Philippines to Acapulco in
Mexico. From there, the goods were carried overland to Spain’s Atlantic ports in eastern Mexico, and thence to Spain. When the
galleons returned to Manila, they carried silver mined in America, on which the Chinese economy depended.

conclude that the Beeswax
Wreck was one of two Manila
galleons that went missing
between 1650 and 1750: the
Santo Cristo, lost in 1693, or
the San Francisco Xavier, which
disappeared in 1705.
At first, the archaeologists
suspected that the Beeswax
Wreck was the San Francisco
Xavier. In 1700 a magnitude 9
earthquake struck the West
Coast, triggering a tsunami. If
the Santo Cristo had wrecked
in the area in 1693, they rea-
soned, the tsunami that swept
the coast just a few years later
would have destroyed any-
thing that was left.
A catalog of Spanish ships
published in the 1930s claimed
that, according to Spanish rec-
ords, the Santo Cristo burned
somewhere in the middle
of the Pacific. But when the
volunteer group researched
Spain’s naval archives, they
found a different tale: Despite
a long search by the Spanish
crown, the Santo Cristo had
simply vanished.
MAS researchers were
then fairly confident that the
Beeswax Wreck and the Santo
Cristo were one and the same.
But identifying the ship-
wreck’s whereabouts would
prove even more challenging.
For the all-volunteer MAS, it
meant diving and surveying in
difficult conditions that could
change in an instant.
By 2019 their remote-
sensing tools had detected ob-
jects off the coast near Manza-
nita that might be the remains
of a wooden ship—or just an
odd boulder on the seafloor.
The wreck of the Santo Cristo
had to be somewhere offshore,
they reasoned, for it had sent a
steady stream of beeswax and
porcelain ashore for genera- CHINESE PORCELAIN FRAGMENTS FOUND
ALONG THE OREGON COAST ARE LIKELY TO
tions of beachcombers to dis- HAVE COME FROM THE SANTO CRISTO’S HOLD.
cover and ponder. BALAZS GARDI
One of those beachcombers
is Craig Andes, a commercial reading about their hunt for
fisherman who belonged to a the same fated vessel.
“Goonies gang” of kids who That information included
grew up exploring the coast, the presence of bits of wood
inspired by tales of the Bees- in sea caves that Andes first
wax Wreck. He shared his spotted in 2013. Believing they
knowledge with MAS after were ship timbers, in 2020 he

8 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
BEACHCOMBER CRAIG ANDES GREW
UP EXPLORING THE OREGON COAST AND
HEARING LEGENDS OF THE BEESWAX
WRECK. HE SPOTTED WOOD FRAGMENTS
IN SEA CAVES NEARLY A DECADE AGO.
BALAZS GARDI
contacted the MAS and urged
them to test a sample.
A lab analysis revealed that
the timbers were hewn from
the Anacardiaceae family of
tropical hardwood found in
Asia. Manila galleons like
the Santo Cristo were built in
Asian ports using Asian ma-
terials. Carbon dating indi-
cated that the tree was felled
around 1650. These facts lined
up squarely with the composi-
tion and age of the Santo Cristo.
During the summer of 2020,
MAS archaeologists investi-
gated the caves—reachable
only by water or a scramble
over rocks at very low tide—
and determined that the
timbers were a “secondary
deposit,” meaning they were
not part of a shipwreck site but
had been washed into the caves,
possibly by the 1700 tsunami.
Archaeologists agreed that
the timbers were at risk of be-
ing swept out to sea, but ex-
tracting them could be dan-
gerous. There would only be
about 90 minutes during an
unusually low tide to docu-
ment and remove the timbers.
Since the recovery could be
safely done only by an expert
team, they enlisted SEARCH
Inc., a cultural resource man-
agement firm, to coordinate
the mission. The project
would be funded in part by a
grant from the National Geo-
graphic Society.
A Dangerous Recovery
After a year of delays caused
by the pandemic and unpre-
dictable weather, a few dozen
people assembled to recover
the remains of the Santo Cris-
to. Personnel from the Tilla-
mook and Clatsop Counties
Sheriff’s Offices joined ar-
chaeologists from Oregon
Parks and Recreation Depart-
ment, MAS, and SEARCH Inc.
in the risky scramble to the sea
caves. As an added safety
measure, rescue swimmers
from the Nehalem Bay Fire and
Rescue Department circled
close by on jet skis.
The timbers were recov-
ered in time, and the team
felt immense relief that the
operation had concluded
safely. Beachcomber Andes
watched the activity, mar-
veling at the complex cho-
reography. Nearly a decade
had passed since he spotted
the timbers, and as the first,
and largest, piece was towed
ashore, he ran his hand fondly
along the glistening surface.
The timbers are now at the
Columbia River Maritime
Museum in Astoria, Oregon.
Each timber will be scanned
in detail, and the scans will be
shared with Manila galleon
experts around the world to
better understand how the ex-
traordinary ships were built.
—Kristin Romey
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 9
PROFILES
The Lone Woman of
San Nicolas Island
This Nicoleño woman’s life has been imagined in history and fiction as a romantic
castaway tale, but archaeologists and historians are revealing a more complex story.
Life of
the Lone
Woman
1814
Russian otter hunters land
on San Nicolas Island and
kill as much as 90 percent
of the people living there.
1835
Missionaries send a boat
to San Nicolas and bring
the surviving Nicoleño to
mainland California.
1853
A Nicoleño woman is
found living alone on San
Nicolas and is brought to
Mission Santa Barbara. She
dies seven weeks later.
1960
The Lone Woman’s story
is fictionalized in Scott
O’Dell’s Island of the
Blue Dolphins, bringing
attention to her story.
10 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
W
hen otter hunters re-
turned to Santa Bar-
bara from California’s
most remote coastal
island in 1853, they
carried more than cargo and a diverse
crew. Also aboard was a 50-year-old
woman—a passenger who spoke a lan-
guage they could not understand. More
astounding, she apparently had spent
18 years alone on the island.
A striking, romantic figure, the wom-
an soon became an object of national
fascination and romantic speculation—
fueling tales of a surviving castaway.
“Undoubtedly,” a correspondent wrote,
“she is the last of her race.”
Nameless. Silent. Courageous. Her
story had all the makings of a fascinat-
ing historical yarn—and inspired not
just lengthy newspaper articles but also
Scott O’Dell’s Newbery Medal–winning
Island of the Blue Dolphins, a staple of
elementary school curricula nationwide.
But the details of the Lone Woman’s
life, historians and archaeologists are
now discovering, were built on a foun-
dation of shifting sand. Today schol-
ars believe that nearly everything they
thought about the enigmatic figure was
wrong—and that the Lone Woman was
anything but alone.
Details of the Lone Woman’s life, historians
and archaeologists are now discovering, were
built on a foundation of shifting sand.
RED ABALONE WERE A KEY FOOD SOURCE FOR NATIVE POPULATIONS ON CALIFORNIA’S CHANNEL ISLANDS.
DAVID LIITTSCHWAGER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGES
Channel Islands Castaway
About 60 miles off the California coast
in chilly waters, San Nicolas Island is
the most remote of the Channel Islands,
an archipelago with a tormented history
of Indigenous use and environmental
exploitation. Today five of the eight
islands make up the Channel Islands
National Park, but San Nicolas is used
for weapons testing by the U.S. Navy.
In the 19th century it was home to the
Nicoleño, Native Americans who had
inhabited it for thousands of years.
The secluded, dune-covered island
was largely ignored by early Europe-
an explorers, who did little more than
name it. In the early 19th century,
though, that changed—and so did the
fate of its roughly 300 Native inhabi-
tants. Beginning in 1814, Russian otter
hunters landed on San Nicolas in search
of valuable furs. Mayhem ensued. Con-
temporary documents suggest that in
retaliation for the murder of one of the
hunters, the group massacred up to
90 percent of the Nicoleño. When in
1835 the remaining Nicoleño boarded
a schooner to Los Angeles, the island’s
abundant otter population had been
hunted nearly to extinction.
The Nicoleño had left their ancestral
home. But one remained. Cut to 1853,
 LONE WOMAN
ARTIST HOLLI HARMON
IMAGINES SAN NICOLAS
ISLAND IN THE 1800S.
SANTA BARBARA
NATURAL HISTORY
MUSEUM
HOLLI HARMON. HOLLIHARMON.COM

CAL IF OR NI A
Santa Barbara

Los
Angeles
Santa
CHANNEL Catalina
San
Nicolas
San
ISLANDS Clemente

when newspaper accounts of the dis-
covery of a “female Robinson Crusoe”
began to flood out of California. After
years of rumors that someone still lived
on the island, an American-led trapping
expedition found and “rescued” a
resourceful woman in a greenish
cormorant-feather skirt. She had lived
in both a whale bone hut and a cave
and subsisted on island wildlife—seal
blubber, plant bulbs, abalone, birds.
Though the woman apparently en-
joyed her new life in an adobe home in
Santa Barbara, her trip to the mainland
was lonely too. The communication
barrier seemed insurmountable and
mainland diseases took their toll. She
died within seven weeks of her “rescue.”
Before her death, a Catholic missionary
christened her “Juana Maria.”
That story—one of wild solitude,
natural beauty, native grit, and the tragic
fate of the “noble savage,” caught the
attention of author Scott O’Dell, whose
1960 Island of the Blue Dolphins is based
on the story. The book fictionalized the
Lone Woman as the resilient teenager
Karana, creating a portrait of a girl’s
coming of age in the face of overwhelm-
ing difficulty.
Fact Finding
It would seem there’s no more to learn
about the woman who, stranded by
herself on her home island, hunted,
fished, and withstood the elements
as her people died out. But recent re-
search suggests there’s more—much
more—to the story.
In the 20th century archaeologists
began to return to San Nicolas in search
of more information about Juana Maria
and her people. They would find up to
500 archaeological sites on the island.
THE NICOLEÑO
ARCHAEOLOGICAL and ge-
netic evidence shows two
waves of Nicoleño on San
Nicolas Island, which was
occupied for roughly 8,000
years. Their culture seems
to have been closely linked
to the ocean—a testament
to the lack of land animals.
Remnants include everything
from bone arrowheads to a
cave marked with images of
whales. The tribe appears to
have coexisted peaceably
with a variety of visitors—
hunters from Mexico, Russia,
Alaska, and elsewhere—from
the 17th century on.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 11

 SANTA BARBARA ISLAND is one of
the closest islands to San Nicolas.
Archaeologists believe that the
Nicoleño and other peoples may
have seasonally visited it to fish
and harvest mollusks but did not
settle there.
TOM BEAN/ALAMY

Some, like the remnants of a whale bone Independent historical researcher the myths and misunderstandings that
hut, do appear to be linked to the Lone Susan Morris fell in love with the Lone still surround the Lone Woman’s place
Woman herself, while others provide Woman in fourth grade after she read in history.
more documentation of the rich histo- Island of the Blue Dolphins in school. “I Despite previous scholarship and
ry of the Nicoleño. Still others refute was completely inspired by her lessons abundant secondary sources, says Mor-
nearly every dramatic highlight of Juana of courage and resourcefulness,” she ris, it was clear 19th-century chroniclers
Maria’s supposed solitary life on San says. Morris is one of a team of research- had bypassed a variety of sources—the
Nicolas Island. ers who has spent years dismantling hunters who visited San Nicolas, the
Native people who interacted with
the Lone Woman during the last
months of her lifetime, the mis-
NEW NAME, NEW CAREER sionaries who baptized her, the
island’s archaeological record, the
Nicoleño themselves. Their mo-
BORN ODELL SCOTT in Los Angeles in 1898, Scott O’Dell
tivations are lost to time, but one
worked in the silent film industry before becoming a
respected author of books for adults. A typographic suspects the compelling tale of a
error on an early work resulted in his pen name, and lone castaway might have clouded
O’Dell’s 1960 Island of the Blue Dolphins resulted in a their collective judgment.
new career as an award-winning author of children’s When taken into account, those
historical fiction. When O’Dell died in 1989, he had historical sources reveal a very
written 26 children’s books. different story. The team traced
ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS WON THE PRESTIGIOUS NEWBERY MEDAL IN 1961. the Nicoleño who left the island
in 1835 and learned that at least

12 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
 GABRIELEÑO PEOPLE
(BELOW) APPEAR IN
FERDINAND DEPPE’S 19TH-
CENTURY PAINTING OF THE
MISSION SAN GABRIEL.
LAGUNA ART MUSEUM,
CALIFORNIA
THE HISTORY COLLECTION/ALAMY

COMPLICATED LEGACIES
THE TONGVA were one of many Native American peoples living in what is now Los Angeles County
when Spanish colonists arrived in the region in 1769. Catholic priests founded the Mission San Ga-
briel there in 1771 and began seeking local converts to Christianity. Many Tongva, which the Spanish
called the Gabrieleño, were forced to work at the mission and cruelly punished if they resisted;
historians estimate that thousands of Native deaths can be traced to conditions at the mission,
where many Tongva are buried. Today, many Tongva descendants embrace the name Gabrieleño
despite its complex history and origins, embracing it to honor their ancestors who proudly identi-
fied as Gabrieleño while they worked to preserve their people’s language, traditions, and heritage.

seven of them had settled in Los Ange-
les, where they thrived. At least one of
them, dubbed Tomás, outlived the Lone
Woman, disproving the romantic por-
trayal of her being the “last of her tribe.”
Claims that no one could communi-
cate with her were inaccurate too. Lin-
guists have now traced the four remain-
ing words of her dialect to the Takic
linguistic branch. (Santa Barbara’s Native
population spoke Chumash, which ex-
plains their difficulty understanding her
attempts to communicate with them.)
Eventually, the woman did manage to
speak with people who could compre-
hend her. “She was trying to share her
story,” Morris said in a 2018 lecture.
That story, it turns out, was wildly
misinterpreted by the white men who
took the Lone Woman to Santa Barbara.
When found, she used gestures to tell
her tale—emphatic hand movements
that, they thought, showed she had
stayed on the island because of a lost
infant who was later eaten by wild dogs.
But when Morris and her colleagues
consulted notes by ethnologist John
Peabody Harrington, who interviewed
some Native Californians about the tale
in the late 19th century, they found she
had actually stayed on the island with
her son, who hid from the newcom-
ers that arrived to take the Nicoleño
to mainland California. For years, the
pair thrived together on the island. The
mother only left San Nicolas after her
son’s tragic death in what historians
think may have been a shark attack.
Today scholars are still learning more
about the vibrant cultures that thrived
on California’s Channel Islands. The
Chumash are believed to have lived on
mainland California in addition to four
of the Channel Islands: Santa Cruz,
Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and Anacapa.
The southern Channel Islands of Santa
Barbara, Santa Catalina, and San Cle-
mente are linked to the Tongva people
(also known as the Gabrieleño, the name
Spanish missionaries called them), who
may have been culturally linked to the
Nicoleño.
The search for more information on
the Lone Woman continues. Morris and
colleagues have turned their attention
to the Nicoleño of Los Angeles, where
they’re searching for living descen-
dants of the tribe. It’s a chance, she
says, to both honor the Lone Woman
and acknowledge Native Californians’
resilience despite repeated colonization
and denigration.“They lived on the land
for thousands of years. They continue
to live today.” Perhaps further research
will reveal more about what happened
to the Lone Woman’s people long after
her death—exploding yet another myth
born on that lonely, windswept island.
—Erin Blakemore

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 13

 DA I LY L I F E
A Toast to
Champagne
Raising a glass of France’s most iconic sparkling wine
originated in the unique weather of Champagne,
where cold winters helped put the bubbles into bottles
of white wine.
P
opping corks and fizzing bub- dissipate when making a still wine. To
bles are the signature sounds of make a bubbly one, vintners employ a
Champagne, perhaps the most second fermentation inside the bot-
popular drink to ever come out tle, which traps the gas within. When
of France. Associated with wealth, glam- a bottle of sparkling wine is opened,
our, and good times, this sparkling white it’s the escape of the carbon dioxide
wine can be found at celebrations of all gas that produces the distinctive“Pop!”
kinds, from boisterous New Year’s Eve as well as the beverage’s tiny bubbles.
parties to intimate dinners for two. “Pinning down a date for Cham-
While fizzy wines are made all over pagne’s first bubble is one of those silly
the world, to be called “Champagne” academic crusades, as [naturally occur-
the wine’s grapes must hail from the ring] fizzy wine has been around for as
Champagne region of France, and the long as wine itself,” said David White,
wine must be made using the méth- author of But First, Champagne: A Mod-
ode champenoise to create the signa- ern Guide to the World’s Favorite Wine.
ture bubbles. Stemware was designed A place with a deep, rich history of
to highlight the appearance of these winemaking, Champagne’s viticul-
bubbles. Tall slender flutes and sophis- ture goes back 2,000 years. Romans
ticated coupes showed off the sparkles planted vines there around 57 b.c., and
created by the method. they gave the area its name: Campan-
Wine is made by fermentation, when ia, Land of Plains. These early wines
yeast converts the sugars in grapes into were meant to be still, and it would be
alcohol. The chemical reaction produc- centuries before Champagne became
es carbon dioxide, which is allowed to synonymous with sparkling wine.
LEGENDARY ORIGINS
CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, the monk
Dom Pérignon did not invent Cham-
pagne in the 1690s. This legend origi-
nated in the 1820s when Dom Grossard,
one of Dom Pérignon’s successors at
the Abbey of Saint-Pierre d’Hautvillers,
falsely attributed it to the 17th-century
cellar master.
DOM PÉRIGNON. STATUE IN ÉPERNAY
ALAMY/ACI
PINOT BLANC
IS ONE GRAPE
VARIETAL THAT
IS USED TO MAKE
CHAMPAGNE.
DEA/ALBUM
Birth of the Bubbles
By the Middle Ages the abbeys and pri-
ories of Champagne were producing
light-bodied reds that won many ad-
mirers. Philip Augustus, France’s rul-
er from 1180 to 1223, would only serve
wine from Champagne’s Abbey of Saint-
Pierre d’Hautvillers. Champagne’s capi-
tal, Reims, traditionally hosted royal cor-
onations, which featured local wines. At
the coronation of Louis XIII in 1610, only
the wines of Champagne were served.
These lands are France’s northern-
most wine-growing region, and its cold
winters could interrupt fermentation.
When temperatures warmed, the pro-
cess would restart, and gas would be
produced in the bottle. Sometimes it
would turn the wine fizzy, but it could
also cause glass bottles to explode.
The question, then, is who was the
first to intentionally make sparkling
wine? To White and other experts, the
answer lies in England. Champagne
wines were shipped there in casks. Upon
arrival, the wines were transferred from
casks into thick glass bottles with cork
stoppers where a secondary fermenta-
tion could happen. If it did, the bubbly
wine delighted English drinkers, who be-
gan working out how to make the fizzy
stuff themselves.
In 1662, in a paper delivered to the
Royal Society, Dr. Christopher Merret

stated, “Our wine-coopers of recent
times use vast quantities of Sugar Mo-
lasses to all sorts of wines to make them
brisk and sparkling.”This description is
the first documented use of deliberately
adding sugars to wine in a sealed bottle,
the technique that became the basis of
Champagne production.
A few years after Merret submitted
his paper, Dom Pérignon, a Benedictine
monk, would become the cellar master
of the Abbey of Saint-Pierre d’Hautvil-
lers. Later, in the 19th century, he would
be falsely credited as Champagne’s in-
ventor when in reality he was the first to
blend different grapes to create lighter,
more complex still white wines. Far from
TOAST OF THE TOWN
New York printmaker
Louis Prang made this
still life in 1890, when
Champagne was still
a relatively new luxury
import from France.
FINE ART/GETTY IMAGES
The Champagne
Name Game
SPARKLING WHITE WINES are also made in Italy (prosecco), Spain
(cava), and California (which has been making them since the
1860s). Some of these houses use the méthode champenoise to
produce their bubbles. But in the eyes of the world, these wines
are not true Champagne. Eu- wines from California, such as
ropean Union trade agree- Korbel, use the term “Califor-
ments bar the use of the term nia Champagne” to describe
“Champagne,” along with their bubbly. In other words,
“méthode champenoise,” to all Champagne is sparkling
protect the French appella- wine, but not all sparkling
tion. Even so, some sparkling wine is Champagne.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 15
 DA I LY L I F E
being the inventor of fizzy wine in the
region, he may have even worked to get
rid of bubbles in Champagne wines.
The growing English taste for fizz
began to catch on with the French aris-
tocracy even though Champagne pro-
duction was technically demanding—
in 1710 fewer than 10,000 bottles were
sold. In 1715, after the death of Louis XIV,
Philippe II, duc d’Orléans, be-
came regent
until Louis
XV came of
age. His parties
featured spar-
kling wine. The
After the death of Louis XIV in
1715, the French elite acquired a
taste for sparkling Champagne.
FRENCH CHAMPAGNE FLUTES FROM THE 18TH CENTURY
LEFT: AKG ALBUM. RIGHT: RMN-GRAND PALAIS
16 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
oldest winery in Champagne dedicated
exclusively to sparkling wines, Ruinart,
opened in 1729. In the 1730s Voltaire’s
poem“The Man of the World” captured
the bubbly’s growing appeal:
Serve me with wine, whose mighty force
Makes the cork from the bottle fly
Like lightning darting from the sky.
Mothers of Invention
Champagne’s popularity steadily
spread from France and England to
other markets. The advance to world
domination began in full force during
the 19th century, with French widows
OYSTERS AND BUBBLY
This 1735 painting
by Jean-François de
Troy shows the French
aristocratic craze
for Champagne and
oyster dinners.
RENÉ-GABRIEL OJEDA/RMN-GRAND PALAIS
leading the charge. In the early 19th cen-
tury, married women had little indepen-
dence, but widows could own property
and businesses. A small group of women
who took over Champagne labels from
their deceased husbands transformed
them from modest operations into to-
day’s most recognizable houses.
Foremost among these women is
Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, better known
today as Madame Clicquot, or Veuve
(Widow) Clicquot. Her husband died in
1805, and she struggled to revive their
sinking wine business amid the wide-
spread upheaval of the Napoleonic Wars
(1803-1815). But war, she realized, could
be turned to her economic advantage.
As the conflict drew to a close, she an-
ticipated demand for Clicquot wines
in Russia, whose troops had occupied
Champagne and developed a taste for its
wines. Defying French trade blockades,
she shipped her Champagne to Russia,
where it found great acclaim.

Madame Clicquot is probably best
known for her innovative solution to a
problem that had bedeviled Champagne
makers for centuries: how to remove the
sediment formed after secondary fer-
mentation. If left inside the bottle, this
layer would make the wine cloudy and
unappealing. Vintners would remove it
by transferring wine from one bottle to
another, which was a labor-intensive
and wasteful process.
Madame Clicquot designed a rack
to store wine upside down during sec-
ondary fermentation, so the sediment
would collect in the neck of the bottles.
By pulling the corks on these bottles,
the layer was easy to remove with lit-
tle loss of fluid. This technique, called
remuage (or riddling), is still used today.
For Clicquot, it also accelerated produc-
tion to meet rising demand and outpace
competitors.
In the 1860s another Champagne
widow, Louise Pommery, created a
sparkling wine using less sugar. Dry
rather than sweet, Pommery Cham-
pagnes relied on better quality grapes
and took longer to produce, so they
were more expensive to make. Eco-
nomically, Pommery took a risk, but
it proved to be a shrewd move in an
international market. Pommery looked
to Britain, already awash with sweet
wines such as port, Madeira, and sher-
ry, and whose consumers were look-
ing for something new. Pommery’s brut
style of Champagne won over Victo-
rian England and soon the rest of the
world. It remains one of the most pop-
ular styles of Champagne today.
Grapes of Wrath
Champagne’s geographic location
has made it a battleground whenever
France has been invaded from the east.
For centuries, conflicts rampaged over
the Land of Plains, led by the Romans,
the Goths, and Attila the Hun. Later,
WORTH THE WAIT
A worker removes
sediment from bottles
of Champagne in the
cellars of Moët &
Chandon in 1961.
The process is known
as riddling.
KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GETTY IMAGES
the Hundred Years’ and Thirty Years’
Wars had huge impacts on the region.
One of the most devastating events
inflicted on Champagne was World
War I, when more than 40 percent of
the region’s vineyards were destroyed.
During the conflict, residents in the
heavily bombed city of Reims sought
shelter in wine cellars. With most local
men fighting in the French Army, the
tasks of gathering grapes and processing
wine fell mostly to women, who emerged
from the cellars by night to pick grapes
and keep basic production alive.
In World War II Champagne was
again occupied by the Germans, but
the vineyards survived relatively in-
tact. Winston Churchill (who some say
consumed 42,000 bottles of Champagne
in his lifetime) told his colleagues at the
height of the war: “Remember, gentle-
men, it’s not just France we are fighting
for, it’s Champagne!”
—Braden Phillips
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 17
THE POLARIS became trapped
in the ice during the return
of the polar expedition. Oil
painting, William Bradford,
1875. Taubman Museum of
Art, Roanoke, Virginia
TAUBMAN MUSEUM OF ART, ROANOKE, VIRGINIA

Arctic Murder Mystery:

Voyage of the U.S.S. Polaris
Led by Charles Francis Hall, the 1871-73 American expedition attempted to reach the
North Pole but ended in one disaster after another—beginning with Hall’s death.

A
long with much of the Amer-
ican and British public in the
mid-19th century, Charles
Francis Hall was riveted by
accounts of Sir John Franklin’s tragic
1845 expedition in search of the North-
west Passage, the fabled Arctic sea route
between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The scale of the loss—two vessels and
129 men—and the mystery surround-
ing the fates of Franklin and his crew,
prompted many expeditions that set out
to discover the outcome of their story.
“Hall was a deeply eccentric man,
perhaps the unlikeliest fellow to ever
become an Arctic explorer,” said Russell
A. Potter, a professor at Rhode Island
College. Hall had no more than a few
years of education and lived a quiet life
as a family man and modestly success-
ful engraver and publisher in Cincin-
nati, Ohio. But his interest in Franklin’s
doomed quest turned into an obsession
with the Arctic and a personal mission
to find survivors. By the late 1850s var-
ious expeditions had found bodies and
relics from the Franklin crew, dimming
hopes of finding anyone alive. Still, in
1860, the 39-year-old Hall left Ohio for
the Arctic to see if there were any lives
left to save.
Hall undertook two trips to the Arc-
tic during the 1860s. He found no sur-
vivors from the Franklin party, but he
lived among the Inuit people for nearly
eight years and documented their cul-
ture more than anyone had before him.
When he returned to Washington,
D.C., in 1869, Hall had his sights set

18 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
 MILESTONES

PREDECESSORS
OF THE
POLARIS ARCTIC OCEAN
82° 29' N

GR
BEFORE THE POLARIS VOYAGE 2 EE
NL
(route shown in yellow), Baffin AN
Bay 1
others had explored possible

D
routes to the North Pole past
northwest Greenland and
1 Baffin Bay. In 1852 Briton
Edward Inglefield discov-
ered that 2 Smith Sound
was navigable. In 1853
American Elisha Kent Kane
led an expedition to find sur-
NORTH
vivors of the Franklin party.
He discovered the Kennedy AMERICA
Channel between Ellesmere
Island and Greenland, later New York
followed by others seek-
ing the North Pole. In 1860 Polaris (1871)
American Isaac Israel Hayes Outward route
Maximum
pushed for the North Pole latitude reached
but also had to turn back.
ALAMY/CORDON PRESS

on going to the North Pole, which had
replaced the Northwest Passage as the
chief goal of Arctic explorers. Apart
from the costs of finding the passage,
many believed it could never be a viable
commercial waterway. Hall lobbied hard
for his expedition, winning the backing
of President Ulysses S. Grant.
Congress authorized $50,000 for the
voyage, making it the first Arctic ex-
ploration entirely funded by the federal
government. A screw-propelled steamer
used by the Union side in the Civil War
was retrofitted for the Arctic ice. The
hull was reinforced with oak, and the
Over nearly eight years in the
Arctic, Hall lived with the Inuit
and documented their culture.
HALL, ACCOMPANIED BY TWO INUIT ON HIS FIRST TRIP TO THE ARCTIC (1860-62).
BRITISH LIBRARY/ALBUM
bow sheathed in iron. Renamed U.S.S.
Polaris, it set sail from New York on June
29, 1871 with 25 crew members, among
them Inuit guides Ipirvik and his wife
Taqulittuq, as well as their infant son. In
Greenland, Inuk guide and hunter Hans
Hendrick and his family joined the crew.
Power Struggles
Hall knew how to survive in the Arctic
but not how to run a full-fledged
expedition. He was a command-
er with no military
or naval rank, and
a captain with
no navigational experience. In the end,
Sidney O. Budington acted as navigator,
with George E. Tyson as assistant navi-
gator. The vessel’s command was split
three ways.
Another source of division soon
materialized in the form of a German
scientific team also on board, led by
scientist and surgeon Emil Bessels.
He was a 24-year-old graduate of the
University of Heidelberg’s medical
school at 18. Bessels and the Germans
held little respect for the uned-
ucated Hall.
After a month of sailing,
tension and conflicts were
growing. As Tyson would
later write, “Some of the
party seem bound to go
contrary anyway, and if Hall
wants a thing done, that is
just what they won’t do.
There are two parties already,
if not three, aboard.”

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 19

 MILESTONES
IN SMITH SOUND, north of Baffin Bay, the Polaris abruptly broke free from the ice, leaving 19 members of the party stranded
on a floe. They drifted 1,800 miles in extreme conditions for over six months before being rescued near Labrador.
Meanwhile, the Polaris advanced,
reaching latitude 82° 29' N, the first
ship in history to sail that far north.
That, however, would be as far as the
ship would get. Turned back by ice in
the Lincoln Sea, the Polaris put in for
the winter in northwestern Greenland,
a spot Hall called “Thank God Harbor,”
about 500 miles south of the pole.
A COLD CASE?
HALL WAS TREATED for his sudden illness by
ship surgeon Emil Bessels. Evidence strongly
suggests he poisoned Hall with arsenic. It is
also believed Bessels stole the ship’s log and
Hall’s own diary, both of which went missing
at the inquest and remain lost to this day.
HALL’S FUNERAL PROCESSION. ENGRAVING FROM 1880
DEA/SCALA, FLORENCE
20 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
On October 24, 1871, Hall returned
from a two-week sledge journey to the
north. He drank a cup of coffee and be-
came violently ill, with symptoms that
included delirium and partial paralysis.
Bessels diagnosed his condition as ap-
oplexy (a stroke). Meanwhile Hall in-
sisted that Bessels was trying to poison
him. He even banned the doctor from
BERTRAND RIEGER/GTRES
his bedside from October 29 until No-
vember 4, during which time his condi-
tion improved. Hall then allowed Bes-
sels to resume treatment. He seemed
better, even taking a walk on deck, then
suffered a relapse and died on Novem-
ber 8, 1871. His body was buried nearby.
Budington, now the ship’s leader,
had no interest in reaching the North
Pole, calling it “a damned fool’s errand.”
Once the ice cleared, the ship headed
south on August 12, 1872. Two months
later, when Polaris ran aground on a
submerged iceberg, Budington ordered
cargo to be thrown onto the ice to buoy
the ship.
That night, 19 members of the expe-
dition, including Tyson and all of the
Inuit, were on the ice pack nearby when
it suddenly ruptured. In the blackness of
night, the ship broke free, leaving them
stranded on the floe. Before long, the
ship, with 14 crew members (including
Budington), and the party on the floe
 THE GRIM six-month odyssey of
the Polaris crew marooned on the
ice floe is depicted in this 1876
illustration. Without the Inuit,
who built shelters and hunted for
food, they all would have died.
BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA/DEA/GETTY IMAGES

lost contact. Cast adrift for more than Nearly a century after Hall’s death, Another piece of evidence emerged
six months, the group was rescued from Arctic historian Chauncey C. Loom- in 2015, when Russell Potter, the Rhode
the floe by a whaler off the coast of Lab- is investigated the mystery, which he Island College professor, came across an
rador. If it were not for the Inuit among recounted in Weird and Tragic Shores: envelope postmarked October 23, 1871,
them, who hunted from the floe’s edge, The Story of Charles Francis Hall. In 1968 and addressed by Hall to 24-year-old
they would not have survived. Loomis had Hall’s body exhumed. Anal- Miss Vinnie Ream, a talented artist who
Meanwhile, the 14 survivors on the ysis revealed that he had received large had been commissioned to make a stat-
Polaris experienced their own odyssey. doses of arsenic in the last two weeks ue of Abraham Lincoln when she was 18.
With coal stores running low, Buding- before his death. Arsenic was common Before sailing on the Polaris, both Hall
ton decided to run the ship aground in medical kits at the time but was never and Bessels socialized with Miss Ream
near Etah, Greenland. The crew built given in such quantities. Loomis con- in New York.
a hut and the local Inuit helped them sidered Budington, who dreaded the Potter knew there had been corre-
survive the winter. The crew then built journey north, as a suspect. However, spondence between her and Bessels
two boats out of wood from the Polaris the arsenic had been administered to that suggests a romantic connection.
and sailed south. They were rescued on simulate apoplexy, which Budington Miss Ream also sent a bust of Lincoln
June 23, 1873 by a whaler off Cape York. would not know how to do. to Hall, which he placed in his cabin on
Loomis concluded that Bessels was the Polaris. Potter theorizes that a love
Murder and Motives the only one with the skill to murder triangle might have been at the root of
The Navy held an inquiry into Charles Hall, but a clear motive was lacking. Hall’s death. “The additional motive for
Francis Hall’s death, but with conflicting Bessels was openly dismissive of Hall, Bessels makes the case a strong one,”
testimony, and no body for an autopsy, who returned the favor by calling him said Potter, “but absent a time machine,
no charges were made. Clearly there was “the little German dancing master.” But, I don’t think it can ever be 100 percent
little incentive to add scandal to an al- Loomis’s opinion was that personal dis- resolved.”
ready disastrous outcome. like was too weak a motive for murder. —Braden Phillips

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 21

 MYSTERIES OF

TUT
One hundred years after the discovery of the teenage pharaoh’s
tomb, much is known about him, while many questions linger
around his family, his life, and his death.
ANN R. WILLIAMS

22 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
FACE OF THE
PHARAOH
King Tutankhamun wears a
khepresh, commonly known
as the blue crown, in this
limestone bust sculpted
after he took the throne.
Opposite: A gold dagger and
its sheath found entombed
with the Boy King.
BUST: KENNETH GARRETT
CEREMONIAL DAGGER AND SHEATH:
ETHAN MILLER / GETTY IMAGES

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 23


F
rom the earliest days of archaeol-
ogy in Egypt, the Valley of the Kings
has exerted an irresistible allure. The
famed cemetery was the burial place of
royals during the golden age of the
18th, 19th, and 20th dynasties. Conducted
since at least the early 1800s, excavations have
revealed that most of the rock-cut tombs in
the area were thoroughly looted in antiqui-
ty. The one great exception—the four richly
appointed chambers of King Tutankhamun
Nebkheperure—yielded not only a
stunning trove of artifacts but a
glimpse of the country’s astound-
ing wealth and culture during the
14th century b.c.
Since its discovery in 1922, King
Tut’s tomb has provided ample
evidence that has allowed both
experts and amateurs to puzzle out
the young pharaoh’s life and times,
including the political intrigues
that must have swirled around
him in the wake of his succession
RULER OF TWO LANDS. GILDED FIGURES OF
TUTANKHAMUN WEAR THE CROWNS OF UPPER (LEFT)
AND LOWER EGYPT (RIGHT). EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, CAIRO
KENNETH GARRETT
24 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
ON ASSIGNMENT
National Geographic
correspondent Maynard
Owen Williams photographed
this moment at the opening
ceremonies of Tutankhamun’s
tomb in February 1923.
MAYNARD OWEN WILLIAMS/NG IMAGE COLLECTION
to the throne. Some parts of the picture fit neatly
together, while other details are not so clear.
Now, a century after the tomb’s discovery, is
perhaps a fitting moment to consider what the
experts have learned, and at what they can still
only guess.
Surprising Find
The story of the discovery of King Tut’s final
resting place begins in 1902, two decades before
its discovery, when Egypt granted permission to
American lawyer and businessman Theodore
Davis to dig in the Valley of the Kings. Davis
would go on to fund excavations there for more
than a decade, discovering and excavating some
30 tombs. He also unearthed tantalizing clues
about the young king, whose name was mostly
absent from historical records.
Davis came across two minor deposits con-
taining artifacts with Tutankhamun’s name.
One was an embalming cache; the other held
embossed, decorative gold from chariots. Davis
believed he had found the mysterious pharaoh’s
burial, but he was disappointed with the arti-
facts. Other underwhelming discoveries that he
made subsequently convinced him that it was
finally time to quit.“I fear that the Valley of the
Tombs is now exhausted,” he explained.
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KV61 220
A

Maiherperi KV29 Thutmose IV

KV43
KV36
Tomb of King’s VALL E Y OF T HE KIN GS,
E

Bay;
EA ST VALLEY
Daughters
Amenherkhepshef; and Sons
Mentuherkhepeshef KV40
KV13
Siptah KV55 Tomb
KV47 KV26
Aboveground pathway
Tawosret; 200 KV59
Sethnakhte 100 ft
KV14 KV30
50 m
KV31
Contour interval 5 meters
Tia’a KV37
KV32 KVF
22

Thutmose I
0

KV38 Seti II
KV15 KV33
24

Thutmose III
0

Hatshepsut- KV34
Meryet-Ra Amenhotep I
KV39, 650 feet to tomb
26

KV42
0

0
24NG MAPS

1902 1914 1922 1923

DIGGING American explorer Sponsored by Lord Carter’s team finds a On February 16, Carter
FOR Theodore Davis finds
artifacts bearing
Carnarvon, British
archaeologist Howard
stone stairway leading
into the ground. At its
officially unseals
the tomb’s burial
A KING Tutankhamun’s name
in the Valley of the
Carter starts searching
for more traces of
foot is a sealed door
bearing the seal of
chamber, which holds
the pharaoh’s stone
Kings. Tutankhamun. Tutankhamun. sarcophagus.
NATIONAL GE
 Tutmania in
the Twenties
A WORLDWIDE CRAZE for all things ancient Egyptian
spread in the wake of the discovery of King Tutankh-
amun’s tomb in 1922. People wanted to read books and
see movies about ancient Egypt, but they also wanted
“the look” of Tut. The world of fashion found inspira-
tion in the photographs of artifacts recovered from the
tomb’s chambers. The jewelers Tiffany & Company,
Cartier, and Van Cleef & Arpels created Egypt-themed
collections that featured ancient elements such as
hieroglyphs, scarabs, and sphinxes. Paris designer Paul
Poiret paid homage to Tut by creating couture that
highlighted colors, cuts, and patterns from ancient
Egyptian works of art. Cosmetics queen Helena Ru-
binstein—creator of the Valaze Egyptian Mask, which
promised to rejuvenate “aging, relaxed faces”—even
wore one of Poiret’s Egyptian-themed frocks in a 1923
advertisement for her products. These Egyptian motifs
would become an integral part of art deco, the iconic
visual language of the Roaring Twenties.

EXCITEMENT According to one report, Davis had come Family Tree

FOR EGYPT
The October 6, 1923,
cover of The Saturday
Evening Post (above)
reflects the world’s
then fascination with
all things Egyptian.
JJS/ALAMY
within six feet of Tutankhamun’s tomb. His
pivotal decision to give up his concession in
the valley on the very brink of success allowed
Lord Carnarvon, a wealthy Englishman, to step
in in 1914. Working for Carnarvon, archaeolo-
gist Howard Carter conducted excavations over
the next eight years before uncovering the steps
leading to King Tut’s tomb on November 4, 1922.
After slowly, carefully removing and catalogu-
ing many hundreds of dazzling funerary arti-
facts, Carter was finally able to open Tut’s nested
coffins in late 1925 and gaze upon the mummy.
“The youthful Pharaoh was before us at last: an
obscure and ephemeral ruler, ceasing to be the
mere shadow of a name,” he wrote. “Here was
the climax of our long researches.”By then, King
Tut had become one of the most famous
people in the world. His image and name
were everywhere. In the field of Egyptology,
the once little-known ruler was now one of the
pharaohs that historians knew best.
SCORPION GODDESS. SELKET, ONE OF THE FOUR PROTECTIVE
GODDESSES GUARDING TUTANKHAMUN’S CANOPIC SHRINE.
EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, CAIRO
© BOLTIN PICTURE LIBRARY / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
Clues uncovered in Tut’s tomb—KV62,
the 62nd burial complex found in the valley
—confirm that he was one of the successors of
heretic king Amenhotep IV. The latter chose
a new name, Akhenaten, meaning “effective
for the Aten,” the god that the king decided to
worship to the exclusion of all others. In the
distinctive art of the era, the Aten appears as
a sun disk whose rays deliver blessings and
eternal life.
Tut’s original name was Tutankhaten, “liv-
ing image of the Aten.” He was surely born in
Akhenaten’s new capital, Akhetaten—“horizon
of the Aten”—today the archaeological site of
Amarna. Everyone at court, government offi-
cials and bureaucrats, and thousands of arti-
sans and laborers had moved to Akhetaten with
the king, abandoning the traditional capital of
Thebes, modern Luxor. That occurred in
the midst of a religious revolution in which
Akhenaten made the Aten the country’s one
official god. As centuries of polytheistic tradi-
tion were suddenly upended, with the old gods
falling out of favor, confusion and terror must
have gripped the country.
STANDING WATCH
Guarding the room Carter
dubbed the “Treasury,” the god
Anubis sits before Tut’s canopic
shrine. Protected by four gilded
wood goddess statues, the shrine
contains organs removed during
mummification.
REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION OF
THE GRIFFITH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
DETAILED DRAWINGS
Howard Carter’s team kept
meticulous visual records as it
worked in the tomb, including
a revealing overhead look at
Tutankhamun’s burial chamber
that preserves the placement of
objects where they were found.
REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION OF
THE GRIFFITH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
WARMTH AND
AFFECTION
Beneath the solar disk
Aten, Akhenaten,
Nefertiti, and three of
their daughters are
tenderly depicted on a
stela (above). Neues
Museum, Berlin
RENA EFFENDI/NG IMAGE COLLECTION
30 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
According to the results of DNA tests pub-
lished in 2010, a decayed mummy found in tomb
KV55 was Tut’s father. Some Egyptologists be-
lieve that it was Akhenaten, based largely on
royal epithets on the coffin, but other experts
have their doubts. They wonder if the bones
might belong to someone else—perhaps a shad-
owy figure named Smenkhkare, who may have
been Akhenaten’s brother.
Like many ancient Egyptian royals, Akhen-
aten had more than one wife. His queen was
the famously beautiful Nefertiti, and together
they had six daughters: Meritaten, Meketaten,
Ankhesenpaaten, Neferneferuaten Tasherit,
Neferneferure, and Setpenre. History shows
that the royal couple probably did not produce
a son needed to secure the succession. Archae-
ologists would have to look elsewhere for the
identity of Tut’s mother.
Akhenaten’s other wives included a wom-
an named Kiya, possibly a foreign princess,
who was once thought to be a possible can-
didate for Tut’s mother. But DNA tests
revealed that Tut was the son of a female
KIYA WAS ONE OF AKHENATEN’S WIVES AND ONCE
BELIEVED TO BE TUT’S MOTHER. CALCITE CANOPIC JAR,
CA 1349–1330 B.C. EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, CAIRO
KENNETH GARRETT
mummy found in KV35 (known as the Younger
Lady). That woman was also the sister of the
man from KV55, Tut’s father, making Tut the
product of sister-brother incest. The names
of five of Akhenaten’s sisters are known, but
which one might be the woman from KV35 is
a mystery.
Next in Line?
The name of Akhenaten’s immediate succes-
sor is also uncertain. Nefertiti may have been
a co-ruler with her husband at the end of his
reign, which lasted about 17 years. She then could
have continued to rule in her own right after his
death, perhaps even taking a man’s throne name
to mask being a female ruler.
But there’s another person in the mix here
—Smenkhkare. Did he become king upon Nefer-
titi’s death? Or did Nefertiti not rule at all, and
it was Smenkhkare who succeeded Akhenaten?
His rise to the top would make sense. He had the
right lineage, and he may have been married to
Meritaten, the oldest of Akhenaten and Nefer-
titi’s daughters.
Whoever preceded Tut didn’t rule for long,
and the prince became king when he was about
nine years old. As an heir apparent, he may have
been schooled in all the things a pharaoh would
MOTHER MYSTERY
Researchers call this
mummy the Younger Lady.
DNA analysis indicates that
she is King Tut’s mother and
a sister of Akhenaten, but
her name is unknown.
KENNETH GARRETT
FINISHED need to do to keep the gods happy and Egypt Although incest may have been an attractive
BUSINESS prosperous. But at such a young age he couldn’t strategy for keeping power in the family, it was
Tut’s grandfather, have been ready to rule or to deal with the politi-genetically risky. In this instance the risk did not
Amenhotep III, began cal and religious chaos left by Akhenaten. pay off. Two fragile, mummified fetuses were
a solar courtyard at Tut must have had advisers, and they appar- discovered in King Tut’s tomb, each with her
the Temple of Luxor
ently were focused on restoring Egypt to what own tiny nested inner and outer wooden coffins.
in Thebes (above).
Construction would it had been before Akhenaten’s reign. They They were his daughters with Ankhesenamun.
be finished during moved the court back to Thebes, reinstated the The young couple tried to do their duty and
Tutankhamun’s reign. old gods, and restored ma’at, the foundational produce an heir, but couldn’t. The shared genes
KENNETH GARRETT
Egyptian concept of order and things as they they inherited probably made it impossible for
should be. them to conceive a healthy baby, thus setting up
the inevitable end of the 18th dynasty.
Reign of the Boy King Given his genetic background, it’s not sur-
When he came of age, Tut married, as all pha- prising that Tut was frail. Slight of build, he
raohs should do. His wife was Ankhesen- stood about five feet five and may have had ail-
paaten, Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s daughter. If ments that impeded his ability to walk normally.
Akhenaten was, indeed, Tut’s father, that meant Also, the 2010 test results showed that he suf-
Tut married his half sister—another point of fered from chronic malaria, the result of living
incest in the family tree. By this time Tut and near the mosquito-filled Nile marshes.
his wife had changed their names to reflect the Still, it must have been a shock when he
country’s religious reset and the rehabilitation died at the age of 19. A scramble ensued to
of Amun, a powerful god based in Thebes. They find a burial place, and to surround Tut with
were Tutankhamun, “living image of Amun,” the things a pharaoh would need for the next
and Ankhesenamun,“she lives through Amun.” world. In their hurry the officials chose a tomb
far too small for a pharaoh, included artifacts
CHILD OF TUT. A GILDED FUNERARY MASK WAS that had been made for other royals, and hacked
DESIGNED FOR ONE OF THE TWO MUMMIFIED FETUSES at the wooden coffin to make it fit in the stone
IN TUT’S TOMB. EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, CAIRO
KENNETH GARRETT sarcophagus.

32 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
KINGS AND QUEENS It isn’t clear who directly succeeded Akhenaten after the heretic pharaoh’s death. One candidate is Smenkhkare
and his wife Meritaten (Akhenaten’s daughter), but details, like confirmed depictions of the couple, are scarce. Some identify the couple on the
above stela as Smenkhkare and his queen, while others believe it to be Tut and his wife Ankhesenamun (Meritaten’s sister). Several objects in
Tut’s tomb, such as a dazzling gold throne (below), show a warm relationship between Tut and his bride.
GETTY IMAGES
ABOVE: STELA OF A ROYAL COUPLE, 14TH CENTURY B.C. NEUES MUSEUM, BERLIN BELOW: GOLD THRONE DEPICTING TUTANKHAMUN AND ANKHESENAMUN. EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, CAIRO KENNETH GARRETT

MEETING This was a fraught time in Egyptian history.
THE GODS The royal succession that led to Tut’s time on
A mural from the throne had probably been tumultuous. And
Tutankhamun’s burial now, the young king had died without leaving an
chamber (above) heir. In that context, some historians have imag-
shows the king
between Anubis ined intrigue and skullduggery, with some sug-
(left) and a goddess gesting that a rival’s blow to the head killed Tut.
identified as either Isis A CT scan conducted in 2005 put that idea to
or Nephthys (right). rest. The fragments of bone that a previous x-ray
KENNETH GARRETT
had revealed inside Tut’s head were the result of
a hasty mummification, not a bashed-in skull. A
likely cause of death was a broken leg that pierced
the skin. The wound became infected, leading
to sepsis. The accident could have been caused
by a chariot crash, a battle injury, even an attack
from one of the hippos that wallowed in the Nile.
Queen’s Fate
Around this time, an Egyptian queen whose
name is unknown sent a letter to
Suppiluliumas, king of the
Hittites, Egypt’s archenemies.
THE KING’S GLOVES. MADE OF LINEN, THIS
PAIR WAS FOUND IN THE TOMB AND LIKELY
USED BY TUT WHEN RIDING IN A CHARIOT.
KENNETH GARRETT
Heartless
Pharaoh
THE HEART, believed to be the center of
intelligence in ancient Egyptian cosmol-
ogy, played a crucial part in the afterlife.
The god Anubis would weigh the de-
ceased’s heart to determine their fate
after death. To protect the organ, it was
common for the heart to be separately
embalmed and then returned to the
body during mummification. But Tut’s
mummy has no heart. Perplexed schol-
ars puzzle over why it is absent. One
theory is that priests wanted to connect
Tutankhamun to the god Osiris, who
lost his heart after being murdered and
cut to pieces by his brother. Tut’s res-
toration of the old gods and ending his
father’s heresy could have motivated
priests to strengthen the association
by burying Tut’s heart separately from
the mummy.
“My husband is dead, and I have no son,” she
wrote, asking the king to send a prince for her
to marry. Some experts believe that queen was
Ankhesenamun. Suppiluliumas must have seen
some political advantage to such a union and
sent off a son named Zannanza. The prince died
mysteriously en route, however, with the cause
of death lost to history.
Given the Game of Thrones climate of the time,
murder is certainly a possibility. Some think the
culprit was an Egyptian general named Horem-
heb, who would become king after Tut’s succes-
sor, Aye. Others even go so far as to speculate
that Aye was the mastermind, making a des-
perate, end-of-career power grab once word
reached Egypt about Zennanza’s untimely end.
Aye may have married Ankhesenamun to secure
his own place on the throne. It was all in the fam-
ily: Queen Tiye, Ankhesenamun’s grandmother,
was likely Aye’s sister.
The evidence for the marriage is a ring with
dubious provenance. “Mr. Blanchard of Cairo
acquired last spring, from an unknown site in
the Delta, a blue glass finger-ring which has en-
graved on its bezel . . . the prenomen of King Ay
and the name Ankhesenamun, both names being
FIT FOR A KING
Tutankhamun’s mummy
rested within three nesting
coffins, the innermost of
which was made of solid
gold and weighed more
than 240 pounds.
KENNETH GARRETT
ERASING written in cartouches,”wrote British Egyptolo-
THE PAST gist Percy Newberry in a 1932 report that in-
Horemheb cluded a sketch of the cartouches. The Egyptian
demolished Museum in Berlin may have acquired that same
Akhenaten’s temples ring from a different owner in 1973. Such arti-
to Aten and used the
facts have often changed hands from one private
remnants to construct
the Ninth Pylon collector to another without leaving a traceable
(above) at the Temple chain of custody.
of Amun-Re at Karnak. In any case, Aye was an old man and didn’t live
WERNER FORMAN/GETTY
long after he became king. Left without an offi-
cial role, Ankhesenamun vanished from history.
DNA testing suggests that she may be one of the
two female mummies found in KV21.
Hidden Chambers?
In a saga filled with intriguing questions, one
more has arisen recently: What may lie behind
the painted walls of King Tut’s tomb? In 2015
British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves suggested
that Tut had been hastily buried in chambers
that belonged to an earlier royal tomb complex.
That preceding burial would have been sealed
off, and would now be hidden just beyond Tut’s
own burial chamber. The proposed occupant?
None other than Nefertiti.
A LION RESTS ATOP AN ALABASTER OINTMENT JAR
FOUND IN TUT’S TOMB. EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, CAIRO
KENNETH GARRETT
36 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
Experts were skeptical at first but then began
to wonder whether an adjacent burial might
even hold Meritaten. Ground-penetrating radar
(GPR) scans were carried out, but the results
were inconclusive. The limestone in the Valley
of the Kings is notoriously inconsistent, as hard
and slick as marble in some places and as crum-
bly as dried mud in others. Such irregularities
may have prevented the GPR from getting the
clearest picture of what lay beneath the ground.
If additional tests are conducted in the fu-
ture, they might find nothing at all. But many
people still hope they will reveal a royal tomb
untouched for more than 3,000 years. Such a
bombshell would show, yet again, that the Valley
of the Kings should never be counted out as a
source of astonishing archaeological treasures.
Theodore Davis would have discovered that if
he had only had a bit more faith.
AWARD-WINNING WRITER, REPORTER, AND EDITOR ANN R. WILLIAMS
SPECIALIZES IN THE ANCIENT WORLD AND CULTURAL HERITAGE PRESERVATION.
Learn more
Treasures of Egypt: A Legacy in Photographs
From the Pyramids to Cleopatra
Editors of National Geographic, National Geographic Books, 2022.
Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century
Christina Riggs, PublicAffairs, 2022.
DYNASTY’S END On the north wall of Tut’s tomb is a depiction of Tutankhamun’s successor, Aye (above right), performing the Opening
of the Mouth ceremony on Tut, shown as the god Osiris (above left). Aye held power for four years and was succeeded by Horemheb (below,
left), who rose to power through the military. The last pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, Horemheb had no sons of his own, so he chose his vizier
Paramesse to succeed him. Better known today as Ramses I, Paramesse founded the 19th dynasty.
KENNETH GARRETT
ABOVE: OPENING OF THE MOUTH MURAL FROM TUT’S BURIAL CHAMBER BELOW: HOREMHEB (LEFT) SEATED WITH THE GOD AMUN. EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, TURIN GETTY IMAGES
MAUSOLUS’ CAPITAL CITY
This model of fourth-century b.c. Halicarnassus
shows its harbor, the main avenue that passes
the Mausoleum’s site, and the theater, with
some original features preserved.
BALAGE BALOGH/SCALA, FLORENCE
THE MAUSOLEUM AT
HALICARNASSUS
WONDER OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

The monumental tomb that Mausolus had built in

Halicarnassus was soon recognized as one of antiquity’s
seven wonders for its sumptuous construction and richly
sculpted decoration.

EVA TOBALINA ORAÁ

 Mausolus’
Eternal
Wonder
ca 547 b.c.
Persian king Cyrus the Great
conquers the kingdom of
Lydia. The region of Caria and
the city of Halicarnassus fall
into Persian hands.

ca 377–376 b.c.
The noble Mausolus
becomes satrap of Caria,
succeeding his father,
Hecatomnus, who had been
appointed by Artaxerxes II.

370 b.c.
After Mausolus moves his
capital to Halicarnassus, he
begins a building campaign,
strengthens the city walls,
and begins work on his tomb.

353 b.c.
After Mausolus’ death,
his widow, Artemisia,
continues construction of the
monument-tomb in the center
of Halicarnassus.
ca 350 b.c.
Construction of the Mausoleum
is completed and holds the
remains of both Mausolus and
Artemisia. Its fame will spread
throughout the ancient world.
ca 100 b.c.
Greek poet Antipater of Sidon
compiles a list of the Seven
Wonders of the World, which
includes the Mausoleum at
Halicarnassus.
V
BIG AND BEAUTIFUL isitors approaching ancient Hali-
Even today the carnassus, capital of Caria (in mod-
Mausoleum would ern Turkey’s southwest corner)
dominate the city it
would encounter a number of ex-
once occupied, as
shown in a re-creation citing sights on a morning journey
as it might appear in to market in the fourth century b.c. From the
modern-day Bodrum, crest of the final hill, the whole city would be laid
Turkey, once ancient out before them, nestled at the base of the Car-
Halicarnassus.
ian mountains. They would see the harbor and
NEOMAM STUDIOS
a large continuous wall that surrounded the en-
tire city. Numerous large buildings
would be visible, such as the king
and queen’s palace, theaters, tem-
ples and other public sites, as well
GREEC
GREECE C the agora.
TURKEY Outshining them all would be
the monument standing next to
Halicarnassus the marketplace, in the city cen-
ter. Set off from the city by a high
wall, it was the recently completed
C R E TE
TE tomb of King Mausolus and his
sister-queen, Artemisia II. Com-
pared to everything else around it, the tomb was
immense. Ancient sources say it stood more

40 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
than 140 feet tall (nearly 10 modern stories high).
The outer walls tapered as they rose, giving the
tomb the impression of having been thrust
organically from the earth. Most striking, how-
ever, the foundation, surrounding terrace, walls,
and roof had been covered with brilliant white
marble, causing them to gleam in the full sun-
shine of a Mediterranean morning.
The tomb was adorned with more than 400
freestanding marble sculptures on four different
levels and decorative friezes running along its
sides. Many of the sculptures featured bronze
accents—on weapons, armor, crowns, robes, and
other features—that shone in the sun. But the
sweep of the building drew the eye upward, to
the quadriga, the statue of a four-horse chariot
carrying the larger-than-life statues of Mauso-
lus and Artemisia, crowning what would become
one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Carian Might
Located in southwestern Anatolia, the district of
Caria played a prominent role in ancient times.
The Carians spoke their own language and had
unique religious rites. Famous for their war- PORTRAIT OF
like nature, they were greatly influenced by the MAUSOLUS
Greeks, who had established colonies along the This sculpture
recovered from
coast. Carian territory was conquered by the the Mausoleum
Persians in the sixth century b.c. and became a has traditionally
satrapy, or province, of the Achaemenid Empire been identified as
in the early fourth century b.c. Despite this, the Mausolus. British
Museum, London
satraps who ruled it were local nobles who often
BRITISH MUSEUM /SCALA, FLORENCE
flirted with independence and were not al-
ways loyal to Persian power.
Mausolus, satrap of Caria between 377
and 353 b.c., did just that. After taking
over from his father, Hecatomnus, Mau-
solus ruled as a semi-independent sov-
ereign, to the point that many sourc-
es grant him the title of king. He
signed alliances, founded cities,
and even seized the island of
Rhodes. Although at the start
of his rule he showed loyalty to
the Persians, he soon joined the
so-called Revolt of the Satraps,
a series of uprisings against the
Achaemenids promoted by Egypt.
TIMELESS WONDER
The grandeur of the
Mausoleum resonated
through the ages, as
shown by this 1669 fresco
by Nikolaus Schiel in the
Monastery of Novacella,
South Tyrol, Germany.
DEA/SCALA, FLORENCE

FAMILY HEIRLOOM

THE PERSIAN POT However, when it became clear that the revolt
was doomed to failure, Mausolus played it safe

A
mong the objects uncovered by archaeologists in the
Mausoleum, one is particularly striking. It’s a jar that and once again aligned himself with the Persian
stands just under 12 inches tall, carved from a block of monarchy.
calcite. The jar was made in Egypt and bears a brief in- Mausolus’ father, Hecatomnus, came from
scription in Egyptian, Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite that includes the sacred city of Mylasa (present-day Milas,
the name of the fifth-century b.c. Persian king Xerxes I. Turkey). But Mausolus moved his capital to the
bustling coastal colony of Halicarnassus. He cal-
How did this alabaster jar get his army, exclaimed, “My men
culated that this strategic Greek port, opening
to Caria, and why was it in the have behaved like women, my
tomb of Mausolus? In 480 women like men!” Some believe toward the Dodecanese archipelago in the Ae-
b.c., during the Greco-Persian that this alabaster jar gean, might serve his ambitions better than
wars, and over a century before was a gift from Xe- provincial Mylasa.
the time of Mausolus, Queen rxes I to the brave Mausolus built walls around Halicarnas-
Artemisia I of Caria joined the queen Artemisia I sus strong enough to withstand attacks
army of King Xerxes I with her and was treasured from the newly invented catapult. He set
small fleet of ships during Per- for generations in his palace on a promontory. Below it, he
sia’s second invasion of Greece. her memory, until built a secret port, where he could surrep-
She not only offered the Per- it was passed on titiously amass ships and soldiers. But
sian king excellent counsel but to her descendant all of this construction paled before the
also fought with such courage Queen Artemis-
building that would come to immortalize
and intelligence in the Battle ia II, beloved wife
of Salamis that Xerxes I, while
his name.
and later widow
contemplating the defeat of of Mausolus.
ACHAEMENID ALABASTER JAR, FIFTH CENTURY B.C.
BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON
BRITISH MUSEUM/SCALA, FLORENCE

42 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
Massive Monument
King Mausolus began work on his tomb while
he was still alive. The location of the tomb, right
in the center of the city, already made it excep-
tional. Across the ancient world, burials almost
always took place outside the city walls. But
among the Greek, there were some exceptions
to this rule. Indeed, the tomb of Hecatomnus
stood at the heart of Mylasa. His son’s tomb’s
location in the very center of the city and its
grandeur sent a clear message: Mausolus was a
mighty Carian king.
In 353 b.c. Mausolus died, shortly after work
began on his tomb. He was succeeded by Queen
Artemisia who invited artisans throughout the
Mediterranean to finish the project, ensuring
that the magnificent tomb would attest to the
mnema (memory) of her husband. She entrusted
the design to two architects: Satyros of Paros
and Pythius of Priene. Satyros was a craftsman
who had worked all his life for Mausolus’family.
Pythius was an influential architect, famous
not only for his designs but also for his archi-
tectural treatises.
Next, the task of decorating the tomb was MODELED ON
entrusted to four, perhaps five, sculptors, each THE MAUSOLEUM
This second-
deemed equally skilled, and each of whom took
century a.d.
charge of one face of the Mausoleum. First- Roman-era tomb
century a.d. Roman scholar Pliny the Elder, in in the Turkish city
his Natural History, names four artists—Scopas, of Milas (ancient
Bryaxis, Timotheus, and Leochares—and myste- Mylasa) echoes
the style of the
riously alluded to an unnamed fifth. Vitruvius, a Mausoleum at
Roman architect working in the first century b.c., Halicarnassus.
writes that the renowned Praxiteles rather than IVAN VDOVIN/AWL IMAGES
Timotheus was one of the four. Others have stat-
ed that Praxiteles took charge of the sculptures
on the roof, in particular the quadriga and the
statues of Mausolus and Artemisia.
Whatever its exact composition, this group
was a dream team. Praxiteles and Scopas were
judged among the greatest sculptors of their
time. Hundreds of other artisans and crafts-
men were employed on various portions of the
tomb. It was the combination of Artemisia’s de-
termination (including her willingness to open
her coffers, even bequeathing a legacy from her
estate after her death) and the talent of the work-
force she assembled that created one of the most
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 43
THE TOMB OF MAUSOLUS
THE MAUSOLEUM at Halicarnassus stood
inside 1 a temenos, or sacred enclosure.
It was accessed through 2 a monumental
door that abutted the city’s agora. The
Mausoleum itself was made up of three
parts, one on top of the other. At the bot-
tom was 3 a square structure that tapered
slightly toward the top. The middle section,
2
called 4 the pteron, was a peristyle formed
of 36 Ionic columns with sculptures placed
between them. A solid-rock base supported
5 a pyramid of 24 steps, also adorned with
statues. The pyramid was topped by the
marble sculpture of 6 a quadriga, a chariot
drawn by four horses abreast, driven by
Mausolus and Artemisia.
 6

RE-CREATION OF THE MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS

WITHIN THE TENEMOS (SACRED PRECINCT)
ILLUSTRATION BY JEAN-CLAUDE GOLVIN. MUSÉE DÉPARTEMENTAL
ARLES ANTIQUE © JEAN-CLAUDE GOLVIN/ÉDITIONS ERRANCE
 LEFT BEHIND
The site of the Mausoleum
at Halicarnassus, in the
center of present-day
Bodrum, still preserves
fragments of columns and
other materials from the
ancient building.
ÁLVARO GERMÁN/ALAMY/ACI

UNCOVERING A WONDER

TREASURE HUNT magnificent collections of stone sculpture.

Artemisia II lived just two more years after her

I
n the 19th century nothing visible remained of the Mausoleum. husband’s death. When she died, the Mauso-
Even knowledge of its exact location had sunk into oblivion, but
leum was still unfinished. The artisans stayed
an English archaeologist managed to track down its remains.
on, and their work continued.
Charles Thomas Newton, an assistant at the British Museum in
London, was sent as British vice-consul to Mytilene (on Lesbos) in
1852, with a mission to collect objects that could be of interest to Long-standing Wonder
Once finished, Mausolus’s and Artemisia’s
the museum. Newton made im- tion were the sections of Ionic
ashes were placed in an underground cham-
portant discoveries on the Greek columns made of high-quality
ber, accessed by a hidden entrance in one of
island of Kalymnos, at Knidos marble that lay scattered about
(also in Caria), and at Didyma the site. The irregularity of the the walls. A stone block, fixed into the rock
near Miletus in modern Turkey. terrain prompted him to won- with metal bolts, concealed the entrance.
Newton’s greatest contribution der if ruins could be hidden be- Behind the block there was a small corridor,
was rediscovering one of the low the surface. After securing an antechamber, and a square space, decorat-
Seven Wonders of the Ancient permission to excavate a plot, ed with columns and statues, which housed
World. Poring over texts written Newton quickly uncovered a funereal urns.
by classical authors, Newton set frieze decorated with reliefs and The building housing Mausolus’ remains
his sights on exploring an area in a fragment from a marble lion. soon became famous. All the assembled tal-
the center of the Turkish city of He would later recall, “From that ent that had gone into creating the Mauso-
Bodrum. It appeared unremark- day I had no doubt that the site
leum had burst forth with a new, explosively
able at first, dotted with hous- of the Mausoleum was found.”
energetic style. It made such an impression
es and small plots of land. Yet His team would excavate the
what caught Newton’s atten- site between 1856 and 1857. that renowned poet Antipater of Sidon in-
cluded it among his Seven Wonders of the
World in an ode in the second century b.c.

46 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
The monumental tomb served as inspiration
for similar memorials for the great and mighty,
and “mausoleum” would come to refer to sim-
ilarly grand tombs.
The Mausoleum stood firm on its foundation
for about 17 centuries. Some 16 years after com-
pletion, the tomb largely survived Alexander the
Great’s conquest of Halicarnassus in 334 b.c. In
the Middle Ages a series of earthquakes dam-
aged it. But at the beginning of the 15th century,
its imposing bulk still dominated Bodrum, the
Byzantine port city that then stood on the site
of ancient Halicarnassus.
At this point, the Knights Hospitaller arrived
in the city. These former crusaders, after being
expelled from the Holy Land, settled in the Do-
decanese Islands, headquartered at Rhodes. In
the early 1400s, shortly after occupying Bod-
rum, they erected the Petronium, a vast and im-
posing castle fortress dedicated to St. Peter that
still stands on a promontory overlooking the
city harbor. Unfortunately, the builders used the
damaged Mausoleum as a quarry, from which
they salvaged high-quality square-cut stone
blocks (ashlars) for their fortress. When Bod- CASTLE OF
rum fell to the Turks in 1522, the Mausoleum ST. PETER
was almost completely dismantled. Soon, even Built with stones
the memory of its location was gone. It wasn’t salvaged from the
Mausoleum, the
until 1856 that the English archaeologist Charles Petronium was
Thomas Newton, while exploring Bodrum’s also decorated
center, discovered the buried remains of this with reliefs and
most splendid memorial. sculptures taken
from the tomb,
Exploration of the site recurred over the next as shown in this
century. But from 1966 until 1977, Kristian 1844 engraving
Jeppesen and a team of Danish archaeologists (above).
made the most detailed exploration of the Mau- DEA/GETTY IMAGES
soleum’s remains ever conducted. It is largely
due to their work that we have an understanding
of this true wonder of the ancient world.
AUTHOR AND HISTORIAN EVA TOBALINA ORAÁ
HAS WRITTEN WIDELY ON THE CLASSICAL HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST.
Learn more
The Seven Wonders of the World:
A History of the Modern Imagination
John and Elizabeth Romer, Sterling, New York, 2001.
Relief Sculpture of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
Brian Cook, Bernard Ashmole, and Donald Strong,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 47
WONDROUS T he Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was decorated with
as many as 444 sculptures and reliefs adorning the
monument from top to bottom. The upper pyramid was

SCULPTURES topped with 1 a sculpture of Mausolus at the reins of

a chariot, and beneath this was 2 a frieze depicting the
Centauromachy, a fight between Centaurs and Lapiths,
legendary beings in Greek mythology. Their battle
represented the human struggle between bestial urges and
civilized behavior. 3 Lions graced the steps of the pyramid.
4 Numerous 10-foot-high statues were placed between
the columns of the pteron (peristyle); these colossal figures

4
2

3
ALAMY/ACI

MARK DAVIDSON/ALAMY/ACI
represented gods, heroes, and ancestors of Mausolus. It
is believed that two of them were carved by the influential
Greek sculptor Scopas. Some experts believe they represent
King Mausolus and his wife, Artemisia, while others
identify them with two ancestors of the king. 5 The inner
wall of the pteron was decorated with a frieze of chariot
races. Two bas-relief series adorned the quadrangular
structure below the pteron: one showing 6 battle scenes
between Greeks and Persians, 7 the other depicting an
Amazonomachy, a battle between heroes and Amazons.
Both the Amazonomachy and the Centauromachy scenes
RMN-GRAND PALAIS
DRUM FROM AN IONIAN COLUMN OF
THE MAUSOLEUM, REUSED BY THE
Y/ACI
HOSPITALLERS IN THE PETRONIUM
DSON/ALAM
AURIMAGES
MARK DAVI
alluded to Mausolus’ victories over his enemies, but they
also symbolized the triumph of order over chaos. While the
victorious Greek heroes stood for civilization, the defeated
Amazons and Centaurs represented all that was unnatural.
The lower part of the Mausoleum was decorated with 8
a frieze of people taking animals to be sacrificed. Their
procession led toward a gate depicted in the east facade’s
center, where a colossal statue, perhaps of Mausolus, stood
ready to receive offerings. This mirrored the real sacrifices
of oxen, goats, lambs, roosters, hens, and pigeons made at
his burial.
RMN-GRAND PALAIS
ART BY JEAN-CLAUDE GOLVIN. MUSÉE DÉPARTEMENTAL ARLES ANTIQUE © JEAN-CLAUDE GOLVIN/ÉDITIONS ERRANCE
2
3
4 5
7
6
8
FIT FOR A KING
The palace fortress of Herodium was
begun in 23 b.c. by Herod the Great.
It is situated in what is now the West
Bank, an area of unresolved sovereignty
administered by Israel since 1967. Right,
the meeting between the three magi and
Herod, depicted in the 14th-century Queen
Mary Psalter. British Library, London
MAIN PHOTO: RICHARD T. NOWITZ/GETTY IMAGES
PSALTER: ALBUM/BRITISH LIBRARY
HERODIUM
HEROD’S DESERT
PALACE
Designed by Herod the Great as a Roman country club,
Herodium boasted a theater, pools, and gardens. It also
housed the king’s own mausoleum, whose whereabouts
was, until recently, a mystery.

CAYETANA H. JOHNSON
 Judaea’s
Builder
King
ca 31 b.c.
Herod builds a second winter
palace in Jericho following the
destruction of the first in an
earthquake. The palaces are
situated near those built by his
former Hasmonean rivals.

ca 24 b.c.
Herod expands the Hasmonean
fortress on the rocky plateau of
Masada, in the center of which
he builds a palace. The palace-
fortress structure will be a
hallmark of the Herodian style.

ca 23 b.c.
Commemorating a site where he
won a decisive battle, Herod orders a
mound near Bethlehem to be raised
artificially. This is the foundation for
Herodium, the palace-fortress on the
edge of the Judaean Desert.

ca 22 b.c.
Work begins on the port of
Caesarea. Lasting 12 years,
the program overcomes huge
engineering challenges to become
one of the most vibrant ports in
the eastern Mediterranean.
ca 20 b.c.
Herod begins work on his greatest
legacy project, the conversion of
the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem
into a vast monument. The Romans
will destroy it in a.d. 70; only the
Western Wall remains standing.
ca 14 b.c.
Herod starts working on a
third winter palace at Jericho,
constructed on both sides of
the spectacular Wadi Qelt
canyon. Facing plots and
suffering illness, he starts
to build his mausoleum at
Herodium around 10 b.c.
D
KING’S VINTAGE ominating the arid landscape on
The Latin inscription the edges of the Judaean Desert
on a sherd (below) stands a hill that was once the
from an amphora
in the wine cellar at
pinnacle of territory controlled by
Herodium declares Herod the Great. Identified in the
that it was purchased mid 1800s as the site of the palace-fortress built
by King Herod. by the king, Herodium housed a luxurious oasis
ALAMY/ACI
in the lands southeast of Bethlehem.
Even before its identification, historians had
a clear vision of what this landmark once looked
like, thanks to the Judeo-Roman historian Fla-
vius Josephus. In his History of the Jewish War,
written in the late first century a.d., Josephus
described it as“a hill, raised by the hand of man,
to be the shape of a woman’s breast.”
Comprising palaces, forts, gardens, and a
theater, the complex has provided rich in-
sights into a king whose rule shaped the
early life of Jesus. Excavations in the last
two decades have also cast fresh light
on Herod’s turbulent reign, culmi-
nating in the stunning discovery
of his mausoleum on the slopes
of the hill in 2007.

52 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
 Damascus
LEBANON
Litani
Tyre

SYRIA
Raphana

GALILEE
Sea of
Galilee
Hippos
Nazareth Abila Canatha
mu k
Gebae Yar
Gadara

D
Caesarea

E
Scythopolis Pella

C A
Gerasa

P O
Mediterranean
Sebaste WEST

Jordan
Sea BANK Amathus

L I S
SAMARIA JORDAN
Alexandrium
Joppa Tall Asur
3,353 ft
1,022 m Philadelphia
(Amman)
J U D A E A Docus
Jericho
I SRA E L Jerusalem Cyprus Esbus
Ashqelon
(Herod’s birthplace, Bethlehem Hyrcania
73 B.C.)
Herodium
(Herod’s burial site, 4 B.C.) Herod the Great’s Kingdom
Machaerus (circa 40-4 B.C.)
Gaza Hebron De a d
Herodian fortress
MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM
Sea
IDUMAEA
GAZA MOAB Extent in 4 B.C.
An aerial view of the hilltop STRIP Masada
0 mi 20
palace-fortress of Herodium. Malatha
The rectangular space marked 0 km 20
N E G E V
by columns was once a garden, Present-day shoreline shown
Present-day political boundaries
a remarkable feat of water and country and territory names
engineering in an arid land. in gray
ALAMY/ACI

NG MAPS

Herod and the Hill king of Judaea. But the new king was faced with BIBLICAL
Herod the Great is remembered by Christians a problem: Antigonus, a Hasmonean noble, had VILLAIN
for his cruelty in ordering the Massacre of the himself been appointed king of Judaea, backed A 12th-century
enamel plaque
Innocents in Bethlehem following the birth of by anti-Roman Jews, and Rome’s regional ene-
from Germany
Jesus. Described in the Gospel of Matthew, the mies, the Parthians. (below) depicts
incident was enacted in medieval pageants, and In 40 b.c., near a hill near Bethlehem, the rival King Herod
its perpetrator depicted in works of art and lyr- kings clashed. Herod defeated Antigonus, later ordering the
ics of song as the incarnation of evil. seizing Jerusalem. To commemorate that vic- Massacre of
the Innocents.
Herod was a beneficiary of rapidly growing tory, in 23 b.c. Herod decided to build a palace- Metropolitan
Roman influence in the region. When he was fortress on the site where he fought. Enslaved Museum of Art,
born in Ashqelon in 73 b.c., Judaea was under people were brought in to do the heavy labor, New York
the control of the Hasmoneans, a Jewish dy- and the skilled work of stucco and frescoes was ALBUM/METROPOLITAN
MUSEUM OF ART, NY

nasty whose founders had rebelled against the
Greek-speaking Seleucid empire the century
before. In 63 b.c., when Herod was about 10, the
Roman general Pompey conquered Jerusalem,
severely limiting Hasmonean control.
Herod’s father, Antipater, was a wealthy Jew-
ish noble who admired Roman culture and was
friendly with Julius Caesar. Rewarding his loy-
alty, Rome appointed Antipater ruler of Judaea;
he in turn appointed his son, the young Herod,
as governor of Galilee. Following Antipater’s
death, the Roman senate appointed Herod as
carried out by Greek or Roman
craftsmen. Herodium started
to take shape.
Over the course of his life,
Herod became known for mas-
sive building projects. He would
oversee the lavish expansion of
the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem,
the construction of the town
and harbor of Caesarea, as well
as expanding the Hasmonean
desert fortification of Masada.
DESERT OASIS
Herodium stands between the Judaean
Desert and the Moab mountains, visible
in the background. In defiance of the arid
surroundings, the hilltop upper palace
was equipped with a Roman-style bath,
and in Lower Herodium there were two
more baths and a 10-foot-deep pool. The
royal complex was fed by an aqueduct
that brought water from the reservoirs
known as Solomon’s Pools in the village
of Artas, located about four miles away.
The upper palace had a cistern in the 1
enclosure itself and five other cisterns
excavated in the rock in which rainwater
could be channeled. The water in these
small cisterns was supplemented from
the great pool. 3
ILLUSTRATION: JEAN-CLAUDE GOLVIN. MUSÉE DÉPARTEMENTAL
ARLES ANTIQUE © ÉDITIONS ERRANCE
2

5
7

SECURITY AND LUXURY
DESERT
PALACE
Situated on the border of the Jewish political
heartland of Judaea and the religiously symbolic
region of Idumaea to the south, Herodium was
chosen by Herod as a site of importance.
6
he hilltop palace-fortress of Herodium was
T protected by 1 a large circular tower to
the east, some 60 feet in diameter. The oth-
er three towers were semicircular and faced
north, south, and west, and would have stood
as high as 130 feet. 2 The double-walled
enclosure housed a garden (about 135 by 60
feet) surrounded by a colonnade. A large tri-
clinium, or dining room, and baths opened off
of this area. The single tower structure on the
left of the mound was identified in 2007 as 3
the royal mausoleum. Historians believe it con-
tained the remains of Herod, one of his wives,
and a daughter-in-law. Archaeologists be-
lieve that the mausoleum was surrounded by
a terraced garden that was set into the hillside.
Around the base of the hill was Lower Herodi-
um, where a palace was organized around 4 a
large pool with a circular building in its center.
This structure was believed to be Herod’s rest-
ing place until the 2007 discovery of the mau-
soleum and sarcophagi. 5 A long curving road
was originally thought to be a hippodrome or
racing path, but it is now thought to have had a
much grander purpose. Archaeologists believe
that this path was the processional route used
for the king’s burial. At one end is 6 a mikvah,
or Jewish ritual bath. 7 Another palace was
located beyond the processional route at the
foot of the hill.
DESERT STRONGHOLD
Since its construction a few
years before the birth of Christ,
the palace-fortress of Herodium
has commanded clear views of
Jerusalem to the north.
SIMON NORFOLK/NG IMAGE COLLECTION
Even by these standards, however, Herodium was
an ambitious undertaking. The structure, built
on the summit of the hill, measured about 200
feet in diameter. It was protected by two concen-
tric walls and four large towers aligned with the
four cardinal points of the compass. The palace-
fortress was entered from below by a staircase,
described by Josephus as“two hundred steps of
the whitest marble” that penetrated the hilltop
complex via a tunnel more than 15 feet high.
Around 10 b.c. Herod ordered the addition of
dirt and sand to bulk out the summit of the ex-
isting hill to give it its distinctive mounded top
that can still be appreciated today. The scope
of the complex was remarkable. As Josephus
observes in his account of the site, the lower
settlement was sufficient“to receive the furni-
ture that was put into them . . . and containing
all necessaries, that it might seem to be a city.”
At the base of the hill was Lower Herodium,
consisting of a palace, Roman-style baths, and
a large swimming pool surrounded by gardens.
Ancillary buildings were also built that provid-
ed service and administration to the palaces.
56 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
POWERFUL Maintaining gardens and pools in such an ar-
FRIENDS id environment was, Josephus noted, as much
Herod befriended a feat as the architecture itself: “The water is
influential Romans,
including Marcus
brought from a great way off, and at vast ex-
Vipsanius Agrippa pense, for the place itself is destitute of water.”
(below), the powerful Despite his well-deserved reputation for
son-in-law of Emperor violence, Herod valued beautiful things. The
Augustus. Agrippa palaces were designed for the entertainment of
visited Herodium in
15 b.c. often high-profile guests, such as the occasion
GRANGER/ALBUM in 15 b.c. when Herod entertained Marcus Vip-
sanius Agrippa, the close ally and son-in-law
of Emperor Augustus. Josephus wrote how,
as both palace and fortress, Herodium sat-
isfied “security and beauty.”
The setting of Herodium was chosen
for both symbolic and strategic reasons.
In addition to the symbolism of the site
as the place where Antigonus was de-
feated in 40 b.c., Herodium is near the
border between Judaea and the southern,
desert region of Idumaea, the homeland of
Herod’s father, Antipater. The strategic im-
portance to Herod of Idumaea, and the
south, prompted his refurbishment of

various sanctuaries there, the most important
being the structure that covers the Tomb of the
Patriarchs at Hebron, the traditional resting
place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The south
is also associated with Esau, brother of Jacob
and patriarch of the Edomites (who gave their
name to Idumaea).
Herodium conveniently straddled both the
symbolic south, and the north, where Jerusalem
was located. Offering seclusion while being only
seven miles from Jerusalem, the site was close
enough that Herod could keep an eye on the on-
going works while managing the affairs of state.
Rebel Stronghold
Herod’s last years were marked by a protracted
and agonizing illness, which according to Jose-
phus was characterized by intense itching, se-
vere intestinal pain, shortness of breath, con-
vulsions, and gangrene in the genitals. Poor
health as well as family conspiracies, murders,
and riots stoked the king’s psychological insta-
bility. Josephus writes how Herod ordered 300
high-profile Jewish figures to be locked inside
THE THEATER ROYAL
IN 2008 archaeologists discovered a theater on the slopes of Herodium.
Looking out over Jerusalem, its auditorium had a capacity of more than
400 people. The complex includes a royal box, discovered in 2010,
with Roman-style paintings applied to stucco. The theater had been
built for the visit of Agrippa, the emperor Augustus’ son-in-law, to
Herodium in 15 b.c. It was dismantled before the king’s death, to make
way for the huge earthworks that expanded the summit of the hill.
BERTRAND RIEGER/GTRES
the hippodrome at Jericho and executed as soon
as he passed away (Herod’s children stepped in
to prevent the order from being carried out).
Herod died in 4 b.c. not at Herodium but at
his winter palace in Jericho. Josephus gave a
detailed description of what happened to the
king’s body after his death: “A diadem was put
upon his head, and a scepter in his right hand
. . . and the body was carried two hundred fur-
longs, to Herodium, where he had given order
to be buried.”
Herod was succeeded by his sons, Herod
Archelaus (briefly appointed ruler of Judaea,
Samaria, and Idumaea by the Romans) and the
longer-reigning Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee.
Herodium straddled both the
south and the north, where
Jerusalem was located.
THE TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM ON A COIN MINTED IN A.D. 133
AK
G/A
LBU
M
THE VIP ROOM
Excavated in 2010, a royal box
overlooked the open-air theater at
Herodium. Built to receive Agrippa on
his visit to Judaea in 15 b.c., it aspired to
the latest in Roman interior design. The
walls are adorned with painted panels,
reminiscent of Pompeii.
BERTRAND RIEGER / GTRES

Herod Antipas features prominently in the New OTHER the belief a crusader camp was once built there.
Testament where his actions contribute to the SARCOPHAGI It was known by this name until 1838, when the
executions of both Jesus and John the Baptist. Near the king’s American scholar Edward Robinson was the first
sarcophagus, two
In a.d. 66 the Jews rose against Roman occu- to identify it as the palace-fortress of Herod the
others were found (of
pation. Josephus describes this uprising with which one is depicted Great. Archaeological excavations at Herodium
the freshness of a firsthand witness, having below). These may did not begin until the 1960s. From 1972, they
served as a general on the Jewish side. He re- belong to Malthace, were directed by the Israeli scholar Ehud Netzer,
counts how the Jews expelled the Romans from one of Herod’s wives, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
and to Glaphyra,
Jerusalem until the city was retaken in August, a daughter-in-law. Intrigued by Josephus’description of Herod’s
a.d. 70, and the temple that Herod had done so Archaeologists burial, Netzer spent years searching for Herod’s
much to beautify was destroyed. believe this could be tomb. In May 2007 he finally announced that he
Jewish rebels who had seized Herodium were the Herodian family had uncovered what he believed to be the royal
mausoleum.
finally overrun by Roman troops in a.d. 71. mausoleum containing three broken sarcophagi.
HANAN ISACHAR/ALAMY/ACI
Decades later, during the Bar Kokhba Revolt Built around 10 b.c., likely by the same work-
of a.d. 132-35, the fortress was ers who built the Temple
again used as a rebel base against of Jerusalem and Caesarea
Rome. The lavish complex fell Maritima, the structure
into ruins and the location of was located on the
the site were forgotten. slopes of the hill, just
a few feet below the
Rediscovery palace-fortress. Once
In the 15th century a scholar standing around 80
dubbed the remains of Herodi- feet tall, the lower part
um “Mount of the Franks” in consisted of a podium

58 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022

containing two rooms, one on top of the other.
Above this was a tholos (a circular structure),
surrounded by columns, the whole topped by
a conical roof crowned with an urn.
The sarcophagus that is thought to have
contained the remains of Herod is made of
pinkish Jerusalem limestone. It had been
smashed to pieces. The Jewish rebels that
had occupied Herodium during the revolt of
a.d. 66-70 considered Herod a puppet of the
Roman emperor, so it is likely that they carried
out the destruction.
The mausoleum, when intact, would have
been much larger than others of the period and
was probably designed to be visible from Jerusa-
lem. Herod perhaps intended that other family
members be buried there, too, which is probably
why archaeologists have found two more sar-
cophagi next to the main one. They believe that
one belonged to Malthace, a Samaritan woman
who was one of Herod’s 10 wives, and moth-
er of one of his successors, Herod Archelaus.
Malthace died in Rome a few months after her
husband. The other sarcophagus is believed to
PIECES OF THE PUZZLE
HEROD’S TOMB was once believed to have been in one of the lower
palaces. Site director Ehud Netzer, however, believed that a mauso-
leum would be kept at a distance from living quarters in accordance
with Jewish custom. In 2007 stone fragments were found on the hill.
They bore rosettes, a common motif of mourning, and led Netzer to the
nearby mausoleum. The three sarcophagi it had once housed, including
one believed to have belonged to Herod, were all found smashed.
RESTORERS REASSEMBLE FRAGMENTS FROM HEROD’S MAUSOLEUM AT HERODIUM.
BERTRAND RIEGER/GTRES
belong to Glaphyra, the second wife of Arche-
laus, who died in a.d. 7.
The fact that Herod wanted this site for his
final resting place shows how significant it was
to him. He could have chosen Jericho, his win-
ter capital, where he had three palaces. But he
preferred his tomb to be at Herodium, the
scene of the victory that brought him his king-
dom. Despite the desecration of his remains,
and centuries of derision in both Jewish and
Christian traditions, this palace-fortress, built
on a man-made mountain, whose gardens were
kept green in a desert, still has the power to
awe its visitors.
BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST CAYETANA H. JOHNSON IS CURRENTLY CARRYING OUT
EXCAVATION WORK AT TEL HAZOR, THE LARGEST BIBLICAL-ERA SITE IN ISRAEL.
Learn more
Archaeology of the Bible
Jean-Pierre Isbouts, National Geographic Books, 2016.
Herod the Great: Statesman, Visionary, Tyrant
Norman Gelb, Rowman & Littlefield, 2013.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 59
 Funerary urns
The roof would have
THE KING’S MAUSOLEUM been adorned with

TOMB OF
decorative funerary urns.
This decoration is typical
of Nabataean culture,

HEROD THE and it is notable in such

sites as Petra, the ancient

GREAT
Nabataean capital (today
in Jordan).

Once standing 80 feet high, the

mausoleum reflects Herod’s allegiance
with Greco-Roman culture, with a nod
to the Nabataeans, the Arab culture
to which his mother had belonged. Its
large, square stones (ashlars) are carved
from a limestone known as meleke, or

ALAMY/ACI
royal stone, as it was used for royal
constructions. Although historians are
convinced this is indeed Herod’s tomb,
no inscription has yet been found to
definitively confirm it as such.

Foundation
The podium, the base of the
funerary building, was a square
block more than 30 feet across and
containing two rooms; the lower
of these was some 11 feet high and
the upper one nearer 20 feet high.
The outer walls were decorated
with pilasters and around the top
with rosettes.
EYAL BARTOV/ALAMY/ACI
Sarcophagus chamber
Above the podium stood a
circular structure, called a tholos.
Archaeologists believe that inside
it was the chamber with the king’s
sarcophagus, surrounded by Ionic-
style columns supporting a cornice
decorated with rosettes.

ALAMY/ACI
GETTY IMAGES

The main sarcophagus was covered with a triangular lid decorated with
BERTRAND RIEGER/GTRES

rosettes, a common motif in Jewish ossuaries and in some sarcophagi

of the time.
BAZ RATNER/REUTERS/GTRES
DEFYING
GRAVITY
GOTHIC CATHEDRALS
Across Europe construction of Gothic cathedrals
pushed the limits of technology ever higher as
ambitious architects and skilled artisans strived
to reach the heavens.

MIGUEL SOBRINO GONZÁLEZ

UPLIFTING
Construction of the soaring Cathédrale
Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul in Troyes,
France, began around 1200. Opposite: A
15th-century miniature shows the many
stages of raising a cathedral.
CATHEDRAL: ROBERT HARDING PICTURE LIBRARY
MINIATURE: GRANGER/ALBUM

G othic cathedrals can often
render spectators speech-
less—awestruck by daz-
zling stained glass, towering
ceilings, and engineering
marvels. Other visitors might be moved to
eloquence, like American filmmaker Orson
Welles. He once described France’s Chartres
Cathedral as “this rich stone forest, this epic
chant, this gaiety, this grand, choiring shout
of affirmation.”
Built between the 12th and 16th centuries,
these soaring sacred spaces are among Europe’s
most popular tourist attractions today. From
Notre-Dame de Paris in France to Canterbury
Cathedral in England, they attract people from
all over the world to gaze at their intricate sculp-
tures, pointed arches, and the marriage between
light and air.
The Gothic is perhaps Europe’s most iconic
style of Christian architecture. It first emerged
in France in the 12th century and then spread
across the continent. The Gothic is sometimes
described as the ultimate expression of the
medieval spirit, reflecting a society so fixed on
heaven that it developed pointed arches and but-
tresses to aspire to the realm of God.
While it is certainly true that a deep spiritual
fervor inspired such projects, Gothic cathedrals
were created by more mundane forces too. Tak-
ing centuries to complete, they required dedi-
cated funding, political support, and a skilled
labor force. How Gothic cathedrals were built
tells historians not only about the organization
of medieval societies but also that these build-
ings were shaped by the character, economy, and
64 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
THE MASTER BUILDER
DIRECTS MASONS
ON A 14TH-CENTURY
DECORATIVE RELIEF TILE.
MUSEO DELL’OPERA DEL
DUOMO, FLORENCE
BRIDGEMAN/ACI
available natural resources endemic to the places
where they rose into the sky.
Power and Prestige
The term “cathedral” has evolved into a sort of
catch-all descriptor for large, grand churches.
It’s technical definition is a church that houses
a cathedra (Latin for “bishop’s throne”). One of
Europe’s first cathedrals is the fourth-century
Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome,
the seat of the pope in his capacity as bishop
of Rome.
Cathedrals not only were used to celebrate
Christian rites but also became hubs of polit-
ical power during the Middle Ages. Inside the
sacred space, there was also a fair amount of
day-to-day governance going on. The chapter
(formed by the canons or priests of the cathe-
dral) would meet to discuss diocesan matters in
the cathedral choir, a space that at other times
was dedicated to prayer. They also managed the
deduction of funds for the cathedral from the
collection of rents and local taxes. Part of this
money was also channeled back to the com-
munity in the form of improvements, such as
hospitals, roads and bridges.
In some ways, a cathedral was the medieval
equivalent of a public forum. Merchants used
cathedrals as places to meet clients and close
deals. Guild members negotiated there. Shops
and businesses sprang up along the outer
walls, and the first university schools were
housed within cathedral complexes. Members
of the municipal council met in the cathedral
and justice was sometimes administered at
its doors.
RISE
OF THE
GOTHIC
1100s
In France, the first Gothic
cathedral is erected in Saint-
Denis, France. Construction
begins on structures in Paris
and Chartres.

1200s
The height of the Gothic
period produces cathedrals
in Beauvais (France),
Cologne (Germany), and
Salisbury (England).

1345
Perhaps the world’s most
famous Gothic cathedral,
France’s Notre-Dame
de Paris is finished after
almost 200 years.

1386
Work begins on Italy’s
Milan Cathedral. Despite a
swift start, complications
will delay completion for
nearly 600 years.

1525
After the city church
is destroyed by fire,
construction begins on
a Gothic cathedral in
Segovia, Spain.

1800s
Amid a renewal of
interest in the Gothic
style, unfinished
cathedrals such as
Cologne are completed.

IN THE QUARRY
Workers extracting stone.
Illustration from the encyclopedia
On the Properties of Things, by
Bartholomaeus Anglicus. 15th
century. British Library, London
AKG/ALBUM
BIRTH OF THE GOTHIC
Europe’s first fully Gothic structure,
the Basilique Cathédrale de
Saint-Denis, near Paris, was built
under the direction of Abbot Suger
in the mid-12th century. Large
stained glass windows, enabled
by engineering advances, create
a play of colored light across the
interior.
ALAMY/ACI
CRANES WERE
INNOVATIONS USED IN THE
CONSTRUCTION OF GOTHIC
CATHEDRALS. LIBRARY
OF THE MUSÉE DES ARTS
DÉCORATIFS, PARIS
BRIDGEMAN/ACI
BUILDING This role had been established long before the
MATERIALS Gothic age. Monumental stone-built cathedrals
Workers load a cart also predated the Gothic: These were built in
with stone that was
transported to Paris the style known as Romanesque and emerged in
via the river (below). the 11th century thanks to the wealth brought to
Miniature from the European cities by the emergence of an extensive
Ordinances of the network of pilgrimage routes.
Provost of Merchants of The Gothic emerged from the Romanesque
Paris, 15th century.
KHARBINE-TAPABOR/ALBUM
(which was distinctive for rounded arches), and
relied on a different visual style developed in the
Islamic world: pointed arches, which could
bear more stress than the rounded. Em-
ploying this technique could allow walls
to stretch even higher than before. Direct-
ing the gaze heavenward, the pointed arch
helped emphasize the height of naves, and
their use drove the development of anoth-
er key feature of the Gothic: ribbed vaults
in the ceiling.
Flying buttresses are perhaps the Goth-
ic’s most iconic architectural advance.
These structures are built on the outside of
a cathedral and help distribute the weight
CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL (ENGLAND)
Built over a Romanesque crypt, the cathedral’s
choir at its eastern end was rebuilt in the
Gothic style following a fire in 1174. It is the
first major Gothic structure in England.
PETER DE CLERCQ/AGE/ALAMY
of ceilings and upper structures. This, in turn,
meant that cathedral walls could be thinner, and
penetrated by large glass windows, allowing
more light and air inside the building.
The building generally considered to be the
first, true Gothic structure is the Basilique
Cathédrale de Saint-Denis near Paris, parts of
which were completed in the mid-1100s. From
there, the Gothic style spread through France,
then Spain, Italy, Germany, the Low Countries,
and England.
Building these soaring churches took cen-
turies. A craftsperson could begin work on the
project and never live to see its completion.
Construction of Frances’s Notre-Dame de Par-
is took nearly two centuries, lasting from 1163
to 1345. In the German city of Cologne, the
magnificent Gothic cathedral was begun in
1248; its iconic twin spires were not completed
until the 1800s, clocking in at more than 600
years later.
The Importance of Place
Cathedrals arose for different reasons. Santiago
de Compostela in northwestern Spain is believed
to lie over the resting place of St. James the Great,
the patron saint of Spain. Other Gothic struc-
tures were built to house sacred treaures, such
as Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, which was commis-
sioned by King Louis IX to hold holy relics from
the Passion. A grand cathedral with strong sacred
ties could attract pilgrims to a town, bringing in
commerce and attention. Cathedrals were often
built on top of older structures. Sometimes the
intention was to send a message. In Spain some
cathedrals—such as the 13th-century cathedral
of Toledo—were built over the site of mosques,
to hammer home the symbolism that Spain was
now a Christian country.
Often Gothic cathedrals were replacing old-
er Christian structures. At Amiens, in France,
for example, the 13th-century Gothic cathedral
replaced the previous Romanesque structure,
which had been destroyed by fire. After an 1174
fire destroyed the choir of England’s Canter-
bury Cathedral, the damaged part of the building
was rebuilt over the next decade in the Gothic
style. An unusual example of a cathedral that

REIMS CATHEDRAL. FROM
THE SKETCHBOOK OF FRENCH
ARCHITECT VILLARD DE
HONNECOURT, 13TH CENTURY
BNF/RMN-GRAND PALAIS
TOOLS OF was relocated to another site within the city is
THE TRADE that of Segovia in Spain. In the 16th century, after
A craftsman the old cathedral was destroyed in a region-
checks the angle
of a block with al rebellion, a vast, late Gothic structure
a set square. was built in the former Jewish quarter,
In his other where—as a result of the recent expul-
hand, he holds sion of the Jews—land was available
a stonecutter’s and affordable.
hammer.
15th-century The purchase and transpor-
miniature tation of materials that ca-
GRANGER/AURIMAGES thedral construction entailed
could bring wealth and strate-
gic importance to cities. Begun
in 1401, the cathedral of Seville
in Spain is the largest Goth-
ic structure in the world. The
church authorities set up a huge
crane in Seville’s river port to un-
load the blocks arriving from the
quarry sited downriver, near the
coast. This crane became a source of
income for the church (which rented
the crane to other merchants) and a
SIENA CATHEDRAL (ITALY)
Siena Cathedral is known for its multihued
marble exterior. Its unfinished nave expansion
(right) is a reminder that not all Gothic
projects were brought to completion.
MASSIMO RIPANI/FOTOTECA 9X12
stimulus that helped turn the city into a naval
and commercial power.
Local resources also had a dramatic impact
on a cathedral’s outer appearance. The local
availability of marble in Italy determined the
look of many Italian cathedrals. The Gothic
cathedral in Siena, for example, is faced in col-
ored marble that provides a dramatic finish.
Cathedral Craftspeople
Behind the religious fervor that inspired the
Gothic cathedrals, hard-headed realities had to
be tackled to get these immense, often centu-
ries-long building projects off the ground. Au-
thorities had to recruit and manage engineers,
artists, craftspeople, and laborers, as well as se-
cure and transport the raw materials to the site.
Bringing everything together and keeping the
project running required a lot of political will
and a lot of money.
Romanesque architecture, which preceded
the Gothic, could be built by large teams of rel-
atively unskilled workers. Gothic construction,
on the other hand, required smaller, well-trained
groups of professional craftspeople. Enslaved
laborers, usually prisoners of war, were some-
times employed. Most cathedral builders were
adequately paid and some even enjoyed privileg-
es such as tax exemption. They were often pro-
vided with housing, and there are examples of
workers organizing strikes and protests against
low wages or poor conditions.
Each working group was led by a master build-
er who acted as a primus inter pares—a first
among equals. The master builder would be ad-
ept at the day-to-day practicalities: shaping the
wedge-shaped stone block used to construct an
arch or carving a relief. They also had to project
manage, directing and coordinating the team. An
experienced master builder might move away
from hands-on work and instead give directions
from the scaffolding, a habit that could provoke
resentment. Shoulder to shoulder with the mas-
ter builder worked another essential figure, the
foreman, who maintained quality, kept the proj-
ect on budget, and ensured deadlines were met.
Up to a third of cathedral workers were wom-
en. Although they usually took on ancillary roles,
 COUTANCES GIRONA CATHEDRAL (SPAIN)
CATHEDRAL
PLANS FOR THE In the early 14th century, the plan was to
13TH-CENTURY extend Girona’s Romanesque cathedral with
STRUCTURE IN three Gothic-style naves. Later, these were
NORMANDY,
FRANCE, SHOW ITS
adapted into one exceptionally wide nave.
AMBITIOUS HEIGHT. GABRIELE CROPPI/FOTOTECA 9X12
MÉDIATHÈQUE DE
L’ARCHITECTURE ET DU
PATRIMOINE/RMN-GRAND
PALAIS

how the work should proceed. Some of these

MODEL carrying materials or mixing mortar, there is
PRACTICE some evidence of female master builders. In
Gothic architects often Cuenca, Spain, records show that a woman
made wooden models
of their projects, like called María directed the stained glass work-
this 15th-century one shop. In 13th-century Strasbourg (then a part of
(below) of the the Holy Roman Empire, and today in France),
lantern for the sculptress Sabina von Steinbach is believed
the dome to have created the doorway of the city’s cathe-
of Florence
Cathedral. dral, although some historians argue she may
N. ORSI/BRIDGEMAN/ACI be legendary.
Once the site had been chosen and cleared, the
master builder measured and marked out the
ground plan and deep foundations were exca-
vated. Although architectural plans were made
in advance, the building process tended to be
dynamic, with many cathedrals adapting
and improvising around the original plans
as new techniques became available.
Sources show that when technical
problems arose during the con-
struction, the master builder
would meet with other officials
to exchange ideas and decide
conclaves are well documented, such as those
that took place in Girona, Spain, where the au-
dacious idea of trying to construct an extra wide
nave was raised and eventually adopted. It led
to the building of the widest Gothic nave in the
world.
During construction of the cathedral of Mi-
lan, Italy, numerous meetings were held in the
14th and 15th centuries to find engineering solu-
tions to the ongoing works. Leonardo da Vinci
himself presented some proposals. In Milan,
and elsewhere, architectural plans being used
as a guide were not nearly as detailed as those
of a modern-day architectural project, leaving
many aspects open for discussion. The design
process was solidly practical, based more on the
use of compasses, set squares, and experience
of what had worked in the past than on abstract
calculation.
Workers needed a whole battery of machinery
and handheld tools to perform different, special-
ized tasks, from carving detailed stonework to
transporting and lifting heavy materials. Vari-
ous technological advances were seen for the
first time in Europe during this period , such as
the rotating crane, the metal-wheeled carriage,
various cutting machines, and the humble (but
game-changing) wheelbarrow. Carpenters of-
fered essential support in creating scaffolding
and falsework (the wooden props that supported
arches and vaults during construction).
Damages and Delays
Since many cathedrals sought to innovate with
forms or structures that had never been at-
tempted before, their builders had to take risks.
Even though models or partial full-scale draw-
ings called“mounts”were used, sometimes there
was no way of knowing if a building was going
to stay upright when scaffolding that provision-
ally supported roofs was removed. Some of the
most daring structures did fall down or at least
had to be reinforced.
Domes, especially those topped with heavy
lantern towers were particularly precarious.
The naves themselves could get wobbly when

72 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022

WORK IN dimensions outstripped what could be sup-
PROGRESS ported by physics. In Beauvais, France, vaulting
Cathedrals could above the choir near the main altar collapsed at
sit partially
unfinished the end of the 13th century, after which it was
for decades, necessary to double the number of pillars. As
as shown in a soon as the transept was finished the project
painting (above) was halted and has never been completed.
of 15th-century Workers in the cathedral of Palma de Mallor-
Dordrecht,
Netherlands. ca, Spain, which is almost as tall as that of Beau-
Rijksmuseum, vais, came up with a system of counterweights
Amsterdam under the roof that allowed the immense cathe-
ALBUM
dral nave to be finished successfully. In Amiens,
in northern France, a ring of side chapels was
built to reinforce the huge central section of
the cathedral. But even these were not enough.
Master mason to the king of France, Pierre
Tarisel was brought in to add further reinforce-
ment. Around 1500, he devised a solution that
supports the church to this day: a wrought iron
chain that encircles much of the cathedral.
Often, ambitious plans were hampered by
a lack of funds. It was common for building
work on a cathedral to be halted before it was
74 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
COLOGNE CATHEDRAL (GERMANY)
Construction began in 1248, after a
previous church burned down, but the
cathedral was not completed until the
1800s, when its twin spires were added.
WALTER G. ALLGÖWER/AGE FOTOSTOCK
finished because of budgetary rather than
building problems. In southwest France the
Gothic Narbonne Cathedral was left half built
after the city entered a period of economic and
political turmoil. Some half-finished cathe-
drals may give the jarring impression of a small
older church being swallowed within the jaws
of a much larger, newer, unfinished one, as in
the Beauvais Cathedral in France. In Siena, Italy,
a massive extension planned for its nave was
never completed, and its unfinished walls and
arches still form part of the skyline.
The Classical Spirit
The Gothic never penetrated Italy as much as
other parts of western Europe. With the advent
of the Renaissance in the 15th century, Italy
birthed a new style of cathedral-building that
would soon make the Gothic appear old-
fashioned rather than innovative. Reflecting
the humanistic tenor of the times, the new
architecture placed a much greater emphasis
on classicism. Looking back to classical archi-
tecture from Greece and Rome, pillars and
domes became the defining features of a new
Renaissance style. Churches, cathedrals, and
other civic buildings turned away from the
soaring dimensions of the Gothic, exalting
more modestly proportioned structures.
Times and styles changed, but the old Gothic
structures still stood tall, and huge numbers of
them still dominate Europe’s cityscapes. The
gravity-defying architectural feats of the
period that built them were in some ways simi-
lar to the space race in modern times. Fraught
with risk and demanding huge investment,
cathedral-building enabled European society
to explore its limits, test its capabilities, and
attempt to outperform its rivals.
MIGUEL SOBRINO GONZÁLEZ IS AN ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN WHO HAS CARRIED
OUT NUMEROUS RESTORATIONS ON RELIGIOUS BUILDINGS IN SPAIN.
Learn more
Cathedrals: Masterpieces of Architecture,
Feats of Engineering, Icons of Faith
Simon Jenkins, Rizzoli, New York, 2022.
The Gothic Enterprise:
A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral
Robert A. Scott, University of California Press, 2011.
 8

4
 ILLUSTRATION: MIGUEL SOBRINO GONZÁLEZ
RISE OF
THE GOTHIC
onstructing a Gothic cathedral created a complex landscape,
8 especially if one were built to replace 1 an older Roman-
esque church that would be demolished. The 2 stonema-
9 sons work in a temporary structure at the base of the building. They
use a forge to produce and mend tools. The cathedral is located close
to 3 a city wall and 4 a town square where there are merchants
and shops. It is linked by a raised bridge to 5 the bishop’s palace.
Laborers dig 6 foundation trenches, while 7 sculptors carve statues
around the foot of the building or finish details in the stonework.
Nearby, 8 a crane hoists construction materials while 9 scaf-
folding supports the work in progress on the rising cathedral.

1 3

6
 JANE
AUSTEN
Love and Marriage
in Regency England
Through her novels, this British novelist created
extraordinarily vivid and insightful portraits of how
her social class, the rural English gentry, lived and
loved at the beginning of the 19th century.

MIGUEL ÁNGEL JORDÁN

THE J. PIERPONT MORGAN LIBRARY/SCALA, FLORENCE

AUSTEN’S IMAGE
This engraving is an
idealized version of
the only surviving
portrait of Jane
Austen. Opposite,
Austen’s handwritten
letter from 1807.
J. Pierpont Morgan
Library
WHITE IMAGES/SCALA, FLORENCE
 W e have now another girl, a
present plaything for her
sister Cassy and a future
companion. She is to be
Jenny, and it seems to me
as if she would be as like Henry, as Cassy is to
Neddy.”With these words, the Reverend George
Austen announced the birth of his daughter Jane,
the seventh of eight children (six boys, two girls)
born to his wife, Cassandra Leigh. No one could
have suspected that this baby, born in 1775 in
Steventon, a small town in England, would be-
come one of the most famous novelists of all
time. She died at just 41 and now rests in Win-
chester Cathedral.
Jane Austen’s life was spent mainly
in the domestic sphere, always living
with immediate family, and nev-
er working outside the home.
She lived in Steventon in
Hampshire for 25 years
(except for brief stints
at girls’ schools), in the
resort town of Bath, the port
and naval station of Southampton,
and finally Chawton. She lived through the
NINETEENTH- American War of Independence, the French
CENTURY LAPTOP Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and much
Above, the portable of George IV’s regency. She never left southern
desk used by
Austen when she England, died in Winchester, and never married,
was writing her though she had more than one proposal.
novels. Her glasses But through her acute powers of observation,
and case rest on Austen depicted English society of the period in highlights the enormous obstacles they faced in
its surface. British delicious and often ironic detail. She focused on trying to secure even minimal independence.
Library, London
BRITISH LIBRARY/ALBUM
the dramas in genteel drawing rooms of the up- Life in Regency England did not encourage
per classes and members of the gentry in her six freedom of expression, and penalties for speak-
major novels. All of them place female characters ing against society’s status quo were high. Wom-
center stage. With wit and keen insight, Austen en in particular lacked most legal protections,

1775 1796 1811

LADY Jane Austen is born in
the rectory at Steventon,
Austen begins writing
Pride and Prejudice,
Austen’s novel Sense
and Sensibility is
OF in northwest Hampshire.
She is the seventh child of
perhaps her most
famous and beloved
published. It is the first
novel that she publishes,

LETTERS Rev. George Austen and

Cassandra Leigh.
novel. It will not be
published until 1813.
under the pseudonym
“A Lady.”

80 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
including owning property and making legal LAST HOME social class; adultery and illegitimacy; colonial-
and financial decisions in their own names. In a Austen spent the ism and slavery; and equal rights.
uniquely insightful and subversive style, Aus- last years of her life Jane and her sister, Cassandra, received a
with her mother and
ten’s novels address these and many other social brief formal education at boarding schools. In
sister in this house in
and political issues: primogeniture, entailment, Chawton, England. Austen’s time, the purpose of educating gen-
and inheritance; royalty, wealth, poverty, and HERITAGE/AURIMAGES teel young women was to raise their stock in
the marriage market. A young woman was more
likely to land a decent marriage proposal if she
possessed accomplishments. Some young la-
dies were educated in girls’ schools, others at
1814 1817 home with a governess. But most would learn to
Austen publishes her Austen dies of Addison’s play a musical instrument; to draw, embroider,
novel Mansfield Park, disease in Winchester, a and dance; and to speak a polite smattering of
which many critics year and a half after Emma French, considered a sophisticated language. Su-
consider her darkest, appears. Northanger Abbey
most complex, and and Persuasion will be perficial studies in geography and history might
most serious work. published posthumously. be useful, too, but only as a way of enlivening
conversation.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 81

 GOWN, DUCHESS
OF RICHMOND’S
BALL, 1815. FASHION
MUSEUM, BATH
FASHION MUSEUM BATH/
BRIDGEMAN/ACI
HOW TO
HAVE A BALL
TO BE FOND OF DANCING was a certain step towards falling
in love,” writes Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice. In a
society obsessed with reputation and social standing,
young people had few opportunities to spend time
together unchaperoned. Fancy-dress balls, with their
ritualized intimacy between the sexes, were charged
with possibility. A woman waited for a man to ask her to
dance. If that didn’t happen, she faced the embarrassment
of being a wallflower. The couples changed partners
often, since sharing more than two dances with the same
person was seen as inappropriate and might set tongues
wagging. Many of the important plot turns in Austen’s
novels center on interactions at balls.
In her novel Emma, published in 1815, a year
and a half before her death, Austen describes
Mrs. Goddard’s school as “a real, honest,
old-fashioned boarding school, where a reason-
able quantity of accomplishments were sold at a
reasonable price, and where girls might be sent
to be out of the way, and scramble themselves
into a little education, without any danger of
coming back prodigies.” At 17 or 18, or some-
times earlier, the daughters of upper-middle-
class families were launched into society and
the marriage market. For daughters of the ar-
istocracy and some other privileged families,
this included being presented to a member of
the royal family at the Court of St. James’s in
London. For less well connected young women,
“coming out” would mean attending a private
party or a local dance. Once“out,”a young wom-
an would attend an array of social events: walks,
balls, and tea parties, all with the ultimate goal of
meeting an eligible gentleman willing to make a
marriage proposal.
Inheritance Issues
Such a proposal could be a lifeline for some
women and their families. The fate of many was
marked from birth by an inexorable law of inher-
itance. When the male head of household died,
almost all his possessions were typically passed
to his eldest son, through entailment. If he had
only daughters, legal conditions often came into
play. A man’s assets would skip over the family’s
women, inherited by the next male in the familial
line, which could leave the deceased’s immediate
family with no income. In Pride and Prejudice INVITATION
the Bennet family’s estate is subject to such an TO THE DANCE
A ball at the Royal
entailment. When Mr. Bennet dies, Longbourn
Pavilion, Brighton,
would pass not to his wife or five daughters, but with ladies and
to Mr. Collins, a distant cousin. gentlemen in their
Often, women’s only share of the family for- finest attire. Color
tune was their marriage dowry. So for many engraving by John
Nash, 1827. British
women, marriage was the only way to achieve Library, London
any material stability. Charlotte Lucas in Pride BRITISH LIBRARY/BRIDGEMAN/ACI
and Prejudice openly admits her plight in a diffi-
cult conversation with her friend Elizabeth Ben-
net when they discuss Mr. Collins’s proposal:“I
ask only a comfortable home; and, considering
Mr. Collins’s character, connections, and situ-
ation in life, I am convinced that my chance of
happiness with him is as fair as most people can
boast on entering the marriage state.”
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 83
 EDWARD AUSTEN
KNIGHT MAKING
THE GRAND TOUR.
CHAWTON HOUSE,
HAMPSHIRE
BRIDGEMAN/ACI
WEALTHY
RELATIONS
ONE OF JANE’S OLDER BROTHERS, Edward Austen, climbed
the social ladder unintentionally. When Edward was
12, Thomas Knight, wealthy landowner and member of
Parliament, and his wife, Catherine, visited Steventon
during their honeymoon and called on their relatives,
the Austens. The newlyweds asked them to let Edward
accompany them on the rest of their journey. They were
so impressed with the young man that four years later
they asked to adopt him, since they had no children of
their own. All agreed. But Edward never forgot his birth
family. After George Austen’s death, Edward cared for his
mother and sisters, offering them a comfortable home at
Chawton.
Clinching the marriage deal among the gentry
involved a transaction between the two families.
The groom was expected to have the means to
support his new wife, while the bride had to con-
tribute the dowry put aside for her by her family.
Lack of funds rather than changes in affection
ended many relationships. In Austen’s Sense and
Sensibility (1811)—the first of her novels pub-
lished in her lifetime—Marianne Dashwood
falls in love with a handsome gentleman, John
Willoughby, and he with her. However, Mari-
anne has only a modest dowry. Following the
revelation of Willoughby’s involvement in a
scandal, he is disinherited by his wealthy aunt,
and ruthlessly abandons Marianne to marry a
wealthy heiress.
Proper Professions
Securing a marriage proposal from the heir
to a large estate would have been the dream
of many young women in Austen’s day. Such
a match guaranteed economic and social po-
sition. Landing a member of the aristocracy,
with a title, privileges, and possessions, was a
bonus. Pride and Prejudice’s Fitzwilliam Darcy is
perhaps the best known of all the eligible gen-
tlemen in Austen’s novels. As the owner of an
extensive Derbyshire family estate, his annual
income is 10,000 pounds (equivalent to more
than $1 million today).
While being the firstborn son usually meant
inheriting the family estate, younger brothers
needed to find themselves a profession. Manual
trades were unthinkable for the upper classes
and the gentry. Trade, though potentially lu- CHAWTON
crative, was seen as vulgar. A man might well HOUSE
become rich through it, but he would never be This Elizabethan
mansion and
considered an equal by the members of the no- adjoining grounds
bility. The only respectable career options for in Hampshire were
those who wanted to maintain social standing owned by Edward
were the clergy, the law, or the armed forces. Austen Knight,
Traditionally, few who went into the mili- Jane’s brother who
was adopted in his
tary made a fortune that could compare with youth by a wealthy
that of upper-class firstborn sons. But during relative.
the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) some did get PHILIP ENTICKNAP/ALAMY/ACI
rich, especially Navy officers who took a share
in bounty looted from the French. In Austen’s
Persuasion her protagonist, Anne Elliot, accepts
a marriage proposal from Frederick Wentworth,
a low-ranking seaman. Anne’s associates force
her to break off the engagement. Eight years later,
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 85
 A TINY TABLE
WHERE JANE AUSTEN
COVERTLY WORKED.
JANE AUSTEN’S
HOUSE, ALTON
CHRISTIE’S IMAGES/
BRIDGEMAN/ACI
A ROOM
OF HER OWN
AUSTEN’S NEPHEW AND FIRST BIOGRAPHER, James Edward
Austen-Leigh, tells how his aunt wrote her novels in the
living room, on a portable box that she placed on a small
table. One story, perhaps apocryphal, is that Austen
gave instructions for a creaky door in the house not to
be oiled. The warning gave her time to hide her work
in progress from approaching visitors and to pretend
instead to be writing a letter. Austen wanted no one
except those closest to her to know that she was writing
novels. The four published during her lifetime indicated
they were simply penned “By a Lady.” In a “biographical
notice,” Austen’s brother Henry named her as their
author when two additional novels of hers were published
posthumously in 1817.
Wentworth returns from war as a captain with a
large fortune and finally marries Anne.
Becoming a clergyman was another option
for a second son. In Regency England Anglican
clergy were held in high regard and moved freely
between social classes. With the right connec-
tions, ideally a patron from the aristocracy’s up-
per echelons, a clergyman could obtain a parish
or chaplaincy along with a home and a secure, if
modest, income.
Yet some young women remained skeptical
about ecclesiastical suitors. In Austen’s Mans-
field Park (the third of Austen’s novels to be
published in her lifetime, in 1814), Edmund
Bertram, second son of a wealthy landowner,
decides he will be ordained at 24 and run a
parish on his father’s land. Edmund is in love
with charismatic Mary Crawford, who is un-
impressed: “So you are to be a clergyman, Mr.
Bertram. This is rather a surprise to me,” she
says. He replies, “Why should it surprise you?
You must suppose me designed for some pro-
fession, and might perceive that I am neither a
lawyer, nor a soldier, nor a sailor.” But Mary’s
opinion is categorical:“Men love to distinguish
themselves, and in either of the other lines dis-
tinction may be gained, but not in the church.
A clergyman is nothing.”
Given the transactional vision of marriage
typical of the period, it is striking to some that
in her novels and personal correspondence, Aus-
ten repeatedly defends marrying for love. “Oh,
Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without
affection,” Jane Bennet pleads with her sister
Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice. In her own life, ACCOMPLISHED
Austen espoused the same beliefs. She wrote YOUNG LADIES
to her niece Fanny: “Nothing can be compared A group of upper-
class girls receive
to the misery of being bound without love— a singing lesson.
bound to one, and preferring another; that is a In the background,
punishment which you do not deserve.” In fact, one girl paints
several of Austen’s protagonists do reject mar- while another
riage proposals from wealthy gentlemen even embroiders. 19th-
century engraving,
though they are being offered a life of luxury British Library,
and comfort. London
Taking a look at Austen’s own life, it is BRITISH LIBRARY/
BRIDGEMAN/ACI
tempting to see these instances as more than
just romantic plot twists. She seems to have
followed her own edict when she received a
proposal of marriage from Harris Bigg-Wither,
brother of a dear friend and heir to Manydown
Manor. Although Austen initially accepted his
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 87

PORTRAIT OF
THOMAS LEFROY,
ONCE RUMORED TO BE
ON THE VERGE OF BEING
ENGAGED TO JANE
DEREK CROUCHER/ALAMY/ACI
AUSTEN’S AFFAIR
MUCH INK HAS BEEN SPILLED over Jane Austen’s
relationship with Thomas Lefroy, a young man she met
in 1795 when he was visiting relatives living near the
Austen family home in Steventon. Their idyll lasted just
a few weeks; Lefroy returned to Ireland at the behest
of his family, who seemed keen to nip any attachment
to Austen right in the bud. Austen’s account of their
time together implies an attraction: In a letter to her
sister and confidante, Cassandra, Austen wrote of her
relationship with Lefroy: “You scold me so much in the
nice long letter which I have this moment received from
you, that I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish
friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything
most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and
sitting down together.”
proposal, she turned it down the next day. For
an author often mischaracterized as writing
Regency romances, Austen always had a clear-
eyed view of what marriage entailed and what
she wanted.
Austen and her sister remained unwed, a
situation that she herself recognized as un-
enviable. As she wrote with her usual irony
and wit in a letter to her niece Fanny: “Single
Women have a dreadful propensity for being
poor—which is one very strong argument in
favour of Matrimony.”Professional opportuni-
ties for a single genteel woman were quite lim-
ited. Unless she had private means, through an
inheritance or assistance from a family mem-
ber, the most common field for such a woman
to earn a living was either as a teacher in a girls’
school, or as a governess to gentry. This was
Jane Fairfax’s situation in Austen’s Emma. A
young woman of fine qualities but without
money or connections, she is forced to accept
a job as a governess, remain single, and move
away from home.
Emma also introduces the unfortunate Miss
Bates, a mature single woman who cares for her
elderly mother. They subsist on the meager in-
terest from savings left by the late Mr. Bates.
As a clergyman’s daughter, Miss Bates belongs
to the gentry, but with such little income, she
depends on her neighbors to lead a decent life.
Mr. Knightley, one of her main benefactors, de-
scribes Miss Bates’s bleak situation in a pointed
conversation with Emma: “She is poor; she has
sunk from the comforts she was born to; and,
if she live to old age, must probably sink more.”
Transcending Circumstance
Jane Austen was a woman and a writer at a time
when both circumstances posed challenges.
Along with her mother and sister Cassandra,
she knew hardship and financial dependency
after her father’s death. They were forced to
leave Steventon and were lacking a home of
their own until brother Edward offered them
Chawton Cottage.
However, rather than railing overtly against
the social order and values of her time, Austen
used keen observation to point out their short-
comings. She turned her curious, searching gaze
on the people and situations around her, leav- things and characters interesting, from the truth INSPIRATIONAL
ening her criticisms and raising social concerns of the description and the sentiment.” He went SETTING
subtly, with warmth, insight, and above all hu- on to lament for all her readers: “What a pity Kedleston Hall in
Derbyshire was
mor. What interested her most were the indi- such a gifted creature died so early.” designed by 18th-
viduals she shares with her readers, reflecting century architect
the range of personalities and attitudes found in A SPECIALIST ON THE NOVELS OF JANE AUSTEN, MIGUEL ÁNGEL JORDÁN
TEACHES LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VALENCIA, SPAIN.
Robert Adam. It
her social circle. But her timeless observations partly inspired
of human character and the way of the world Pemberley, the
Learn more ancestral seat of
transcend any limitations of her place and time, Mr. Darcy in Pride
and have become classics. Jane Austen at Home and Prejudice.
Lucy Worsley, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2017.
Sir Walter Scott praised Austen’s “exquisite THE NATIONAL TRUST PHOTO LIBRARY/
ALAMY/ACI
Jane Austen, the Secret Radical
touch, which renders ordinary commonplace Helena Kelly, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2017.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 89

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE:
Jane Austen’s beloved 1813 novel depicts the troubles of a rural
ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. WALLIS
MILLS IN A 1908 EDITION OF
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
BRIDGEMAN/ACI
ride and Prejudice opens with a famous
line: “It is a truth universally acknowl-
edged, that a single man in possession of
a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The nov-
el features couples who embody Austen’s attitudes
toward courtship in the Regency period. Some are
partnerships based on affection; others are more
practical. She also shows what can happen to those
who marry without careful consideration.
AN EARLY EDITION OF PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
BRITISH LIBRARY/AURIMAGES
An Intelligent Marriage
Mr. Darcy is a gentleman and heir to a great
fortune. He reluctantly attends dances
and gatherings with his friend Mr. Bingley,
appearing proud and aloof. But he cannot
help falling in love with Elizabeth Bennet,
daughter of a relatively poor gentleman.
Elizabeth rejects Darcy’s first marriage
proposal indignantly but grows to love him,
realizing that Darcy’s reserve reflects his
fine character, not snobbery or pride. The
two are well matched and marry for love.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
English family of the gentry class in the early 19th century.
Marriage of Necessity
William Collins is Mr. Bennet’s cousin and
heir to Longbourn, the entailed Bennet
estate. Pedantic and pompous, he serves
as an Anglican clergyman on the estate
of his patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh,
Mr. Darcy’s aunt. Mr. Collins first asks
Elizabeth to marry him, and she flatly
rejects him. Her friend Charlotte Lucas
accepts Mr. Collins’s proposal but is clear-
eyed that this match is for security and
stability, not for love.
A Mismatched Marriage
Mr. Bennet is a country gentleman who enjoys
a comfortable life. Having married his wife for
her youth and beauty, he has long grown tired
of her whims and neglects family affairs to
pursue his own interests, particularly his books.
Mr. Bennet has a laissez-faire attitude toward
their daughters’ education and does not share
Mrs. Bennet’s obsession with securing suitable
husbands for their girls. Worst of all, he ignores
the silly flirtations of the two youngest girls,
which nearly ruins the family’s reputation.
DISCOVERIES
Soaring Buddhist
Temples of Bagan
Brought to greatness by a unifying ruler, the kingdom of Bagan was
home to thousands of towering Buddhist temples. The seat of an
empire, this sacred skyline would enthrall pilgrims for centuries.
F
or centuries, visitors to
a bend of the Ayeyar-
wady River in central
Myanmar (Burma)
have been greeted with a
breathtaking spectacle: hun-
dreds of rose-colored pago-
das and temples rising above
red soil and emerald green
vegetation.
This vast sacred landscape
is one of the largest concen-
trations of Buddhist temples
anywhere in the world. Des-
ignated a UNESCO World
Heritage site in 2019, Bagan
is the legacy of a complex re-
lationship between religion
and culture, whose role in the
forging of Burmese identity
would be explored by scholars
in the early 1900s.
Rapid Rise
The name of the modern state
of Myanmar, and its previous
name of Burma, both derive
from a people known either as
SPIRITUAL
CENTER
OF BAGAN
92 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
terrain and climate of much
higher altitudes, the Burman
also learned from the Pyu
wet-rice agriculture that is
still practiced in the Ayeyar-
wady Delta.
Bagan was a modest king-
dom until 1044, when its
greatest ruler, King Anaw-
rahta, ascended the throne.
His accession heralded a ma- PAGODAS, topped
the Mranma or the Burman. jor shift in the fortunes of Ba- with finials known
Historians believe the Burman gan and the region. as hti, create the
originated in the lands bor- The new king improved his thousand-year-old
dering western China and Ti- kingdom’s irrigation systems skyline of Bagan,
near the Ayeyarwady
bet. In the mid-ninth century to make Bagan a major rice River in Myanmar.
a.d., the Burman swept south producer. He also laid ambi- STEVE ALLEN PHOTO/GETTY IMAGES
to occupy the lands of the Pyu tious military plans: In 1057
culture, then in military de- he captured the city of Tha-
cline, establishing Bagan as ton, capital of the rich and
their capital in a.d. 849. cultured Mon kingdom to the
It was not a total conquest, south. Encouraging other Anawrahta’s achievement
however: The Pyu had been Mon rulers to submit to Bur- was as much about cultural
shaped by cultural and eco- man authority, Anawrahta exchange as military con-
nomic ties with India. They rapidly united the whole quest. He fell under the influ-
practiced Buddhism, which Ayeyarwady region under Ba- ence of the Mon variety of
the Burman newcomers ad- gan rule, creating the first Theravada Buddhism, and
opted. Accustomed to the Burmese empire. seeing this practice as a
A.D. 849 1044-1077 1174-1211 1287
A western Chinese Anawrahta The Bagan empire The Bagan
people, the founds an empire reaches its empire falls to
Burman, found centered on architectural and the Mongols. Its
Bagan in the Bagan and begins political zenith in temples become a
Ayeyarwady Delta. building temples. the reign of Sithu II. pilgrimage site.

useful means of unification,
the king promoted it across
the Bagan realm.
Building Bagan
Anawrahta also recognized
the enormous value of Mon
culture, which was steeped in
Indian influences. Thanks to
the wealth gained from con-
quering the Mon ports, Anaw-
rahta could pay Mon artists,
engineers, goldsmiths, and
woodworkers to beautify Ba-
gan. He commissioned count-
less stupas, pagodas, and
temples—each one seeming-
ly grander than the next.
Following Anawrahta’s
death, Bagan’s golden age
rolled on, with buoyant trade
paying for the fast expan-
ding temple landscape.
Sharing the fate of so many
other states, Bagan power
was eventually crushed
under the onslaught of
Mongol invasions. At first,
buoyed by victories, King
Narathihapate shunned di-
plomacy with Kublai Khan,
leader of the Mongols.
DECORATIVE RICHES
BAGAN’S marvels are not just archaeological.
Thousands of its pagodas and monasteries are
also treasure houses of decorative brilliance.
During the reign of imperial founder Anawrahta
and the kings who followed, Bagan lavished its
wealth on adorning the structures with gilded
Buddhas, frescoes, sculptures, and terra-cotta
reliefs glazed with green. A key decorative
theme were the Jatakas, stories of the multiple
human, and non-human, incarnations of the
Buddha before his birth.
FRESCO (DETAIL)
FROM THE LAW
KAHTIKEPAN TEMPLE
COMPLEX, BAGAN
MCPHOTO/AGE FOTOSTOCK
DISCOVERIES

DOWN
TO EARTH
THATBYINNYU is the tallest tem-
ple in Bagan, consisting of five
stories standing some 200
feet tall. It was built by King
Alaungsithu (also known as
Sithu I) at the end of his reign
in the 1160s. Photographed in
1931 for National Geograph-
ic, the main Buddha statue
(right) inside the pagoda sits
in a posture called bhumispar-
sha mudra, the ground touch-
ing gesture. His right hand
touches the ground to request
the Earth goddess to assist his
victory over Mara, the demon
king. Thatbyinnyu shows signs
of two of the greatest threats
to Bagan’s structures: Signifi-
cant earthquake damage, and
spaces where reliefs once
hung, and which were proba-
bly looted.
POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES

Bagan’s luck changed, and a
major defeat in 1277 at the
Battle of Ngasaunggyan was
the beginning of the end. A
decade later, Bagan fell.
Although many of the tem-
ples and pagodas fell into dis-
use in the following centuries,
Bagan resumed importance as
a place of Buddhist pilgrimage
in the 15th century. Its thou-
sands of surviving monu-
ments include temples,
monasteries, and stupas
(structures, which house Bud-
dhist relics, that are shaped
like mounds, bell-like domes,
or cones). These sacred build-
ings are nearly all constructed
of brick faced with stucco.
Among the thousands of
structures—from tiny, one-
room monasteries to sprawl-
ing temples—several land-
marks stand out. The
Lawkananda Pagoda, built by
Anawrahta, astonishes visi-
tors with its gleaming dome,
topped with an umbrella-
shaped finial known as a hti.
This pagoda contains a relic
believed to be one of the Bud-
dha’s teeth. It was obtained
by Anawrahta in Sri Lanka.
Finding the Story
Bagan could not be “discov-
ered,” as it had been treasured
by the Burmese for centuries.
However, its history was

GORDON LUCE’S closest Burmese collaborator was his life-

long friend U Pe Maung Tin. Luce maintained close friend-
ships with other Burmese intellectuals too. In this undated
photo, Luce sits on the right. On the far left is Bohmu Ba
Shin, an expert on Mon and Burmese languages. Next to
him is U Bo Kay, a specialist in Bagan’s art history. Sitting
to the left of Luce is poet Min Thu Wun, whose son, Htin
Kyaw, would in 2016 become Myanmar’s first elected
president with no ties to the military since the 1962 coup.

94 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
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DISCOVERIES
based on royal chronicles:
the 18th-century Maha Yaza-
win and the 19th-century
Hmannan Yazawin.
These accounts place the
origins of Bagan in the very
distant past and mix legends
with verifiable history. In the
early 1900s Burmese scholars
sought new data to provide
more solid historical informa-
tion on Bagan. Among these
were Burmese scholar U Pe
Maung Tin and the British
academic Gordon Luce.
After graduating in classics
at Cambridge University, Luce
taught literature in Rangoon
In the early 1900s scholars sought
new data to provide a historical
framework for Bagan.
96 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
(today, Yangon), the capital of
Burma (today, Myanmar)
when it was part of the Brit-
ish Empire. There Luce be-
friended U Pe Maung Tin, a
specialist in Pali, the sacred
language of Theravada Bud-
dhism. The friendship kin-
dled Luce’s passion for Bur-
mese history. He spent much
time at U Pe Maung Tin’s
home, where he fell in love
with his sister, Me Ti Ti. The
two married in 1915.
In 1918 Luce published his
first article on Bagan. Two
years later, when he applied
f o r a p ro f e s s o rs h i p a t
Rangoon University, he was
told by the British chancellor
that he had been excluded
because of his marriage to a
Burmese woman.
Disappointed, Luce re-
turned to Europe, where he
continued his studies of Bur-
mese history, language, and
culture in Paris and London,
where he studied Chinese.
In 1923 he and U Pe Maung
Tin collaborated on the first
English translation of the
Hmannan Yazawin.
Later, having returned to
Rangoon, Luce concentrated
on researching the Bagan em-
pire by compiling references
to Bagan in medieval texts in
Chinese. Combining this
knowledge with his and U Pe
Maung Tin’s study of inscrip-
tions at Bagan, both men set
THE LAWKANANDA
Pagoda, commissioned
by King Anawrahta,
dates from a.d. 1059.
It is home to a sacred
relic believed to be one
of the Buddha’s teeth.
MCPHOTO/AGE FOTOSTOCK
out to chart the history of
Burma and of Bagan that is
accepted today: That the Bur-
mese originated in the ninth
century a.d. with the Burman
conquest of the Pyu—and
not centuries earlier as the
chronicles claimed.
Bagan has faced challenges
in the 20th century. Resto-
ration of the site by Myan-
mar’s military government
has been criticized by archae-
ologists. Two earthquakes,
in 1975 and 2016, destroyed
many structures. Specialists
of Bagan history hope that
the World Heritage designa-
tion will foster cooperation
between specialists and the
Myanmar government to pre-
serve Bagan’s sacred struc-
tures for years to come.
—Julius Purcell
 $

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