Remains of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in Malta?

Yes, I do put a question mark after the above-mentioned title since there is no tangible proof for this declaration, although serious and well-documented research has been carried out.

Strangely enough, this discovery was not made by professional archaeologists but by an oncologist and history lover, Dr Stephen Brincat, as published in a Maltese newspaper last year. He came across this precious information while reading an article about excavations by the British in the 19th century, stating that a wall from the Mausoleum in Halicarnassus (today’s Bodrum, Turkey) was dismantled and used to build a dock in Malta, which is known as Dock No 1. Archives show that when British archaeologist Charles Newton shipped the excavated artwork from the Mausoleum to the British Museum in London, the HMS Supply entered Grand Harbor in 1858, one year after this dock was built. The same Charles Newton, which I would label as an art-lover, thought that the very wall of the Mausoleum was not worth to be saved, as it would be dismantled by the local population of Bodrum for reuse elsewhere anyway. He may be right, of course, for in the late 1850s, the view towards archaeology was quite different from ours today, but personally, I don’t see that as reason enough to dispose of the blocks in his own way. Dr Brincat traced the stones of this wall to what is now called Cospicua Dock in Malta, which had taken about six years to build.

[picture from Steventilly's album]

It seems that in the past Malta was used regularly as a transit port for loading and unloading antiquities. The precious Elgin Marbles from the Acropolis in Athens for instance, also passed through Malta! They slept on its docks for several years before being finally transferred to the British Museum in London. Unbelievable!

Yet the available plans of the dock don’t tell anything about the origin of the building blocks and the waters in the area are too murky to see all the way to the bottom. So, in a way, we are still guessing, although it would be quite exciting to get the confirmation that a part of the walls from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, still exists. Until now, I was made to believe that the Knights of Rhodes were the culprits for tearing down those beautiful walls, which as a matter of fact would make the British less guilty, right?