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(Could this or is Cyrus the Great related to the story of Thul
Qarnayn?)
Behind Tomb Connected to Alexander the Great, Intrigue
Worthy of "Game of Thrones"
By Heather Pringle
for National Geographic
Published November 21, 2014
(As archaeologists dig deeper into the burial mound,
ancient sources tell a tale of family drama and palace intrigue.)
Suspense is rising as archaeologists sift for clues to
the identity of the person buried with pomp and circumstance in the mysterious
Amphipolis tomb in what is now northern Greece. The research team thinks the
tomb was built for someone very close to Alexander the Great—his mother,
Olympias; one of his wives, Roxane; one of his favorite generals; or possibly
his childhood friend and lover, Hephaestion.
Over the past three months, archaeologist Katerina
Peristeri and her team have made a series of tantalizing discoveries in the
tomb, from columns sculpted masterfully in the shapes of young women to a
mosaic floor depicting the abduction of the Greek goddess Persephone. The
tomb's costly artwork all dates to the tumultuous time around the death of
Alexander the Great, and points to the presence of an important person.
Alexander himself was almost certainly buried in Egypt.
But the final resting places—and the rich historical and genetic data they may
contain—of many of his family members are unknown. The excavation at Amphipolis
is bound to add a new chapter to the history of Alexander the Great and his
family, a dynasty as steeped in intrigue, conspiracy, and bloodshed as the
fictional Lannisters in the popular television series Game of Thrones. Among
Alexander's family, "the king or ruler who ended up dying in his bed was
rare," says Philip Freeman, a biographer of Alexander the Great and a
classical historian at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.
Palace Intrigues
To understand these palace intrigues, one must begin with
Alexander's father, Philip II, who ascended the throne of ancient Macedonia in
359 B.C. At the time, Macedonia was a modest mountain realm north of ancient
Greece, but Philip had big dreams. He transformed Macedonia's army from a band
of ragtag fighters into a disciplined military machine, and he armed it with a
deadly new weapon, the sarissa, a long lance designed to keep enemy troops from
closing in on his phalanxes.
A natural-born conqueror, Philip led his army to the
west, crushing and intimidating the major Greek city-states until all had
surrendered to his rule. "Philip II was a traditional warrior king,"
says Ian Worthington, author of By the Spear: Philip II, Alexander the Great,
and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire. "He was always in the
thick of battle."
By custom, Macedonia's kings married multiple wives,
often for the purposes of sealing political alliances with powerful neighbors.
Alexander's mother, Olympias, was a daughter of the king of Molossia, a realm
that encompassed part of modern Albania, and she claimed descent from the
legendary Greek hero, Achilles. She was one of Philip's many wives, and according
to ancient historians, she schemed relentlessly at court to put her son on the
Macedonian throne. Some historians even suspect that she poisoned Alexander's
older half-brother, impairing his mental faculties.
For a time, her intrigues seemed to succeed. Philip
groomed the young Alexander as his heir, providing the boy with a first-class
education from a renowned tutor, Aristotle, and encouraging his prowess as a
warrior.
But important Macedonian nobles at Philip's court viewed
Alexander as half foreign and possibly illegitimate. By the time Alexander
reached his late teens, Philip seemed to share these doubts. He took a new
Macedonian wife, and during a drinking party, Philip allowed Alexander's
legitimacy to be publicly questioned. Then Philip drew his own sword on
Alexander, a mortal insult.
Philip later tried to patch things up, but he had created
a dangerous enemy. Exactly what happened next is the subject of debate,
although the bare facts are well known. In 336 B.C., Philip threw a lavish public
wedding for one of his daughters and invited members of neighboring royal
houses to attend this state occasion.
As part of the festivities, Philip planned to stage
public games at daybreak in the theater at Aigai, his capital city. He strode
into the stadium, wearing a white cloak over his shoulders. On one side was
Alexander; on the other was his new son-in-law. Philip waved away his
bodyguards, and as he stood at the center of the theater, the large crowd began
to roar with approval.
"That was the last thing he ever heard," says
Worthington. An assassin stepped out from the crowd and stabbed Philip to death
as the guests watched in disbelief. In the ensuing bedlam, the murderer, a man
named Pausanias, bolted from the theater toward a spot where horses were
tethered and waiting for him. But just as Pausanias was about to escape, he
tripped and fell, and three of Philip's bodyguards speared him to death.
Conspiracy Theory
Did Pausanias act alone? Some ancient texts suggest that
he did, assassinating Philip in a jealous rage. Many of the ancient Macedonian
nobles were bisexual, and Philip was no exception. He had taken Pausanias as
his lover, and when he tired of him, he discarded the young man and even
allowed others to sexually abuse Pausanias. So Pausanias may have murdered
Philip in an act of revenge.
But several clues point to a conspiracy, says
Worthington. Pausanias, for example, fled to a spot where multiple horses were
waiting, suggesting that several people had made plans for escaping the crime
scene.
"I think Pausanias was manipulated to kill
Philip," says Worthington, who suspects that Olympias and Alexander played
key parts in the assassination. Both mother and son had been deeply insulted by
Philip. In addition, they may have feared that Philip's young Macedonian wife
would produce a Macedonian heir more acceptable to the local nobility. The only
way to prevent this would be to eliminate Philip. So Worthington theorizes that
Olympias and Alexander poisoned Pausanias's mind and encouraged him to murder
Philip.
Other classical historians aren't so sure Alexander was
guilty of patricide. Nevertheless, says Luther College's Freeman, "if you
put Alexander on a couch today and tried to analyze him, you could have a lot
of fun."
The King Is Dead, Long Live the King
With Philip gone, Alexander had to convince the
Macedonian court that he deserved to be king. He planned a costly funeral for
his father, cremating the body on a massive funeral pyre and constructing an
elaborate tomb for Philip on the outskirts of Aigai (the modern Greek town of
Vergina), some 100 miles from Amphipolis. As Macedonia's aristocracy looked on,
Alexander buried his father "like a Homeric hero," says Ioannes
Graekos, an archaeologist and curator at the Royal Tombs Museum in Vergina.
Inside the tomb, Alexander interred a gold chest
containing Philip's skeletal remains, as well as a host of royal treasures,
from a gilded crown to a golden scepter, a gold cuirass, and a gold- and
ivory-adorned deathbed. Over the doorway, the young king had artists paint a
hunting scene showing Alexander and his father closing in on a lion.
"Only royalty can hunt lions, so Alexander was
honoring his father, but he was also honoring himself," says Terence
Clark, an archaeologist at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec,
who, along with National Geographic and others, is helping to organize a major
new traveling exhibition on the heroes of ancient Greece, including Alexander
the Great. "It's a definitive statement that Alexander is now in
charge."
But despite his appearance of confidence, Alexander still
feared rivals at court. He ordered the deaths of his cousin Amyntas and of one
of Philip's young wards. And his mother, Olympias, took care of enemies among
the royal women. According to at least one ancient text, she forced Philip's
young Macedonian wife to commit suicide and arranged for the murder of her
rival's daughter. Olympias, says Elizabeth Carney, a classical historian at
Clemson University in South Carolina and biographer of Alexander's mother, was
"a political woman."
That left just the army. Alexander had to convince
Macedonia's generals and soldiers alike that he was a commander like his
father. So he embarked on a series of military campaigns, quelling rebels in
the Balkan region, crushing the city-state of Thebes, and leading his army to
one victory after another. By the time he turned 21, Alexander was firmly in
control of Macedonia and Greece, and ready to embark on the conquest of Persia.
Alexander extended his rule to lands as far south as
Egypt and as far east as India, creating one of the greatest empires of the
ancient world. His closest companion was his lover Hephaestion, a Macedonian
general, and when Hephaestion finally succumbed to a mysterious ailment in 324
B.C. on an eastern campaign, Alexander was nearly undone by grief. According to
the ancient writer Plutarch, he had Hephaestion's doctor crucified and
massacred an entire tribe in the region to provide offerings for Hephaestion's
spirit.
Things Fall Apart
By the time of his own death at age 33, Alexander was
still in the east, planning the conquest of Arabia. He clearly preferred the
thrill of battle to the numbing minutiae of governing. He had taken at least
two foreign wives, but had produced no legitimate heir to his massive empire
and had given little apparent thought to the matter of succession. Soon after
he died of a mysterious fever in Babylon, his generals, nobles, and family
members began fighting bitterly over the succession. In the end, his vast empire
was divided as spoils of a civil war, and his entire direct line was wiped out.
Alexander's mother met her end at the hands of a ruthless
Macedonian noble, Cassander. To clear the path to the Macedonian throne,
Cassander took Olympias prisoner during a siege and executed her. Then, like
Alexander himself, he set about eliminating other potential plotters. He
imprisoned Alexander's most important foreign wife, Roxane, and his posthumous
son, Alexander IV, at Amphipolis—and had them both secretly murdered in 311
B.C. With the dirty work done, Cassander ruled the kingdom of Macedonia until
his death in 297 B.C.
Most archaeologists today are convinced, based on
historical accounts, that Alexander himself was buried somewhere in Egypt,
quite possibly in the city that bears his name today, Alexandria. But
researchers have yet to find the tombs of Olympias, Roxane, Hephaestion, and
many of his generals. Perhaps the archaeological team clearing the mysterious
tomb at Amphipolis will yet find the remains of one of them.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141121-amphipolis-tomb-alexander-great-greece-archaeology/
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Ancient Greek Tomb Of Alexander Era: Mystery Deepens Over
The Skeletons And Bones Found
By Kalyan Kumar
21/1/15
International Business Times (AU)
Considerable mystery surrounds the disclosures about a
vast tomb in Greece, built during the period of Alexander the Great, with
archaeologists now claiming that they have found ancient remains of five
people. Ever since the tomb was discovered in 2014, there has been intense
speculation that it may have been built for Alexander the Great, for his mother
or a General in his military. But the disclosure of archaeologists on Monday
that they unearthed bones of five people, including a woman above the age of
60, a newborn baby, two men aged between 35 and 45, overturned many of the
hitherto held assumptions. The ruins of another body, believed to be of an
adult, could not be verified in terms of its age.
Intriguing Excavation
The ancient tomb dates back to 300-325 BC and was located
at the Kastas hill in Amphipolis, reported The Telegraph. Alexander died in 323
BC, at the age of 32, in Babylonia, and his body was supposed to have been
transported to Alexandria for burial.
Inside the tomb, archaeologists also found some marble statues of
sphinxes and a mosaic pavement that depicted the abduction of Persephone by
Hades, who was the king of the underworld.
According to the experts, the bones of one of the men had
cut marks, possibly from a sword or a dagger, adding a new twist to the
occupants of the necropolis. A Daily
Mail report said there is also speculation whether the woman buried at the
Amphipolis site was Roxana, Alexander's Persian wife. It quoted the Culture
Ministry, which said the woman was approximately 5ft 1inch tall.
Great Warrior
Born in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedonia in July
356 BC, Alexander, despite of his short life that ended at the young age of 32,
became world famous for his heroic military expeditions across the Persian
territories of Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt. He came and literally conquered the
lands he surveyed. The warrior's greatest victory was at the Battle of
Gaugamela, now in northern Iraq, in 331 BC. His triumphant treks across Persian
territories made him known as Alexander the Great. After the battle in
Gaugamela, Alexander led his army further 17,800 km and found 70 cities. The
expedition led to Alexander creating an empire that stretched across three
continents-- from Greece to Egypt and further to Indian Punjab.
Creating one of the largest empires in the world with
territories that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Indus, Alexander
became a military legend of all times. But the death of Alexander also
unleashed a bitter succession war to take control of the empire. During the
war, Alexander's mother, widow, son and half-brother were murdered near
Amphipolis. Now the mystery is whether the tomb in questions is housing those
bodies.
(The writer can be reached with feedback at
kalyanaussie@gmail.com)
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ancient+Greek+Tomb+Of+Alexander+Era%3a+Mystery+Deepens+Over+The...-a0398184949
