Necropolis (Mausoleums)

After completion of the Mountain Village I had some extra structures and looking at them I recalled Sidebottom’s book, Fire in the East, describing similar square like buildings located outside the city of Arete. I thought this might be an ideal way of indicating the presence of a city without the need to construct walls and towers, so I searching the Internet for information about my “city of the dead”.

Most of the examples found were for Palmyra and Dura-Europos, but such mausoleums are a feature of most large cities of the Middle East during this era. 

Necropolis – an illustration.

My city of the dead will be built on the slopes of two small hills; each approximately 3BW x 3BW. This will produce some flexibility with its placement on the board. Six blocks have been cut and will form the individual towers. At the moment, each are 40 mm high, but cutting and shaping them will change that. To add further variation, some towers will be fitted into the slope in the same manner as the mountain village.

The extra texture worked very well. Adding a wash over the sand covered areas I dry-brushed and picked out stones and edges of the building. Dried grass did not look as well as the tufts of grass, so these were glued down instead.

Painted and highlighting added to texture the walls and ground, the Necropolis is ready for the table use and placed together, these take up a 3 x 6 BW area or may be used as a single piece measuring 3 x 3 BW.

Cheers,