the Queen of the Underworld. The figures to the left and right of the opening may be the goddesses Demeter and Persephone respectively. The repeated use of the pomegranate in the symbolism is not accidental. Not just in Lycia, but throughout Asia Minor, the Greek world, and Palestine, the pomegranate was widely recognised as a symbol of fructification and procreation. Conversely, it is also a symbol of change and death. This symbolism can be helpful in identifying the deities in the reliefs. The pomegranate is a suitable gift for a goddess of sexuality such as Aphrodite who herself planted the original pomegranate on Cyprus. It is not a suitable gift for an intellectual goddess such as Athena. The pomegranate can have an overtly sexual meaning; Demeter complains that her daughter Persophone was "forced to eat the seed of a pomegranate" in the underworld, by which it is understood that she was raped. The winged creatures are likely not Harpies, but this misidentification has stuck in the name of the monument. A better match is to the Sirens but many sources doubt either of these claims. The small figures they are carrying away may represent the souls of the dead. Another suggestion for the small figures are that they are the daughters of the hero Pandareus who were carried away to become the Furies. Removal of the sculptures The sculpted reliefs were taken to England by Charles Fellows, who had been commissioned by the British Museum to bring back artefacts after they learned of his 1838 exploration of the region. Until then, Lycian culture was virtually unknown in Western Europe. The tomb was (and still is, minus its reliefs) located in the Acropolis of Xanthos. Fellows received permission in October 1841 from the Ottoman Sultan to remove stone artefacts from the region. A Royal Navy ship, HMS Beacon commanded by Captain Graves, was tasked with recovering and transporting the items identified by Fellows. The ship sailed from Malta on 30 October but did not arrive on site until 26 December, delayed largely by unanticipated and protracted negotiations with the Turkish authorities. Fellows' documents did not give him the permissions he thought they did (he had not had them translated), and some of the British Government's requests were seen as unreasonable, such as removing stones from the walls of operational military fortresses. A further delay was caused by a disagreement with Graves.