Khai-Reh! Rejoice little one, I'm Artemisia the Second. I’ll kiss your cheek to greet you! Let me tell you about myself. I grew up as a princess. My father was the King of the Kingdom of Caria.

When he died my husband Mausolus and I became the new King and Queen of Caria. We moved next to the sea to a city called Halicarnassus.

We built amazing temples and statues and made the whole place really pretty from top to bottom. I was always making special medicines using different kinds of plants, too.

When Mausolus died, I kept ruling on my own. But the people on the Island of Rhodes didn’t like a queen being in charge, so they sent soldiers to stop me. I tricked them with a surprise attack and won the battle! Then I sailed to Rhodes with my army to take over their whole kingdom instead!

I’m most famous for building a big and beautiful tomb for King Mausolus. People later called it a Mausoleum, and it was so pretty that it became one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World!

To continue reading Artemisia’s story and discover what happened to her beautiful city and the mausoleum, her story is available to puchase

There is a plant family named Artemisia, after Artemisia II.

It includes mugworts and wormwood.