Egypt Archaeologists May Have Found Alexander the Great’s Tomb

Greek Worls Reporter ^ | Nikoleta Kalmouki

[blam]

Egypt Archaeologists May Have Found Alexander the Great’s Tomb

Nikoleta Kalmouki
April 30, 2014

In Egypt, a team of archaeologists and historians from the Polish Center of Archaeology have revealed a mausoleum made of marble and gold that might be the tomb of Alexander the Great. The site is situated in an area known as Kom el-Dikka in the heart of downtown Alexandria, only 60 meters away from the Mosque of Nebi Daniel.

The monument was apparently sealed off and hidden in the 3rd or 4th century AD, to protect it from the Christian repression and destruction of pagan monuments after the change of the official religion within the Roman Empire. It is a testimony to the multicultural nature of Alexander’s empire, as it combines artistic and architectural influences from Greek, Egyptian, and Persian cultures. The inscriptions are mainly in Greek but there are also a few Egyptian hieroglyphs, mentioning that the mausoleum is dedicated to the “King of Kings, and Conqueror of the World, Alexander III.” The finding is extremely important as it can provide new information about Alexander the Great.

The mausoleum contains a broken sarcophagus made of crystal glass, 37 bones, mostly heavily damaged but presumably all from the same adult male, as well as some broken pottery dating from the Ptolemaic and Roman ages. A carbon-dating analysis and a series of other tests will determine the age of the bones and whether or not they belong to the Macedonian King.

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, not bad... I could have some real fun with that...

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Wasn’t an earlier library burned when Julius Caesar was there hobnobbing with Cleopatra?

[crz]

They burned most of it..if not all.

The muslim burned what was left.

[DannyTN]

Great!

[1010RD]

This is interesting:

Director Hopes to Promote Greek Cinema in China

You can hear the jokes writing themselves.

The Chinese: It's all Greek to me.

The Greeks: For all I know, they might as well have been speaking Chinese.

[TXnMA]

"The monument was apparently sealed off and hidden in the 3rd or 4th century AD, to protect it from the Christian repression and destruction of pagan monuments after the change of the official religion within the Roman Empire. "

Just 60 meters from a mosque -- in muzzie-mad Egypt... How long will it be before this tomb (especially if it has any graphics or statuary) receives "the Bamiyan treatment?

[SunkenCiv]

Not even any of it — Caesar was in the citadel, which is where the library was; he had the Egyptian fleet set on fire in the night to clear the harbor and spread discord and bad morale among his adversaries; the fire spread to one of the dockside warehouses, consuming all within, including “some books which chanced to be there.” The library continued in use until the muzzie conquest, when the caliph sent word that it was all to be burned. The anecdote about it is, it took six months to burn it all, in the stoves used to heat the many public baths in the city.

[SunkenCiv]

No, there was just the one great library, and no, Caesar didn’t burn it. That idiotic movie from the early 1960s got all sanctimonious about it, because, y’know, it was art. Or rather, alleged art.

[SunkenCiv]

“Is that a set of patriotic chopsticks, or are you just happy to see that craft services is serving chicken fried rice?

[TXnMA]

The depicted mural is from another, previously documented site, but the find of a "sarcophagus made of crystal glass" certainly fits with extant descriptions of Alexander's tomb.

The "crystal glass" is the one artifact from this tomb that I would most like to examine in a well-equipped analytical lab...

[TXnMA]

Outstanding!!

Thanks for the "Heads up!", FRiends!

[Jeff Chandler]

How the Pyramids Were Made

[BenLurkin]

37 bones

Hmmm...it’s been a little while since I took those physical anthropology classes. Well, decades actually...but IIRC there are a LOT more bones in the body than 37.

[crz]

So says you..

[wildbill]

Yeah, I suggested going back 200 years because you might find some stuff that was first located in the 1800, eg. Rosetta stone.

[morphing libertarian]

How long before the islamists destroy the site and build a mosque?

Thanx for the post. Makes this site extra special.

[pollywog]

DITTO on bookmarks

[ZULU]

History’s first great megalomaniac.

[Prospero]

If his remains were packed in honey, that's a Sumerian tradition. Not certain how long that practice lasted past the sack of Ur III (c. 1912 BC). But a lot of influences did, including the language (the curia's "Latin" of the 2nd and 1st millenium BC, at least up to the Seleucid, and that would include Alexander's successors. Anyone know why Ptolemy won out over the Seleucids for the tomb site?

Did Ptolemy take possession?

His one-eyed father Philip's tomb was almost certainly uncovered just a few years ago.

[blam]

"I wonder of there is any way of determining whether it was malaria that killed him. As a malaria sufferer, I am curious. This is a fascinating find."

I've read speculation that it may have been West Nile Virus too.