A Competitive Perspective: The Eastern Mediterranean in the Achaemenid Period

Dynastic funerary monuments appear among the most interesting artistic phenomena in the Achaemenid Eastern Mediterranean. The local dynasts ruling over the regions of the Achaemenid Eastern Mediterranean displayed their power in increasingly monumental and lavish tombs, in particular between the fifth and fourth cent. BC. It appears thus thatrenowned monuments such as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus could be better understood within a competitive dynamic that let rulers try to outdo one another.This paper aims at contextualising this competitive phenomenon within the political and social framework of the Achaemenid Empire. Focusing on the iconographies and the materials used for thesedynastic monuments, this investigation will allow us to consider also the important issue of the Achaemenid impact on the peripheries of the empire

Keywords:

Eastern Mediterranean , Achaemenid Empire , dynastic funerary monuments iconographies , materials , competition