ABSTRACT
The fourth-century BCE Hekatomnid dynasty of Karia, originally holders of a cultic kingship centered on Mylasa and, from the 390s BCE, Persian-appointed satraps of Karia, sought to fashion a royal dynastic identity through brother–sister marriage. The Hekatomnids intended by this practice to establish family membership—blood—as the basis of the family’s power and to place Hekatomnid kingship on a non-cultic, non-satrapal basis. The brother–sister marriage of Artemisia, the fifth-century dynast of Halikarnassos, may have provided a local antecedent for the later Hekatomnid practice.
