As a twenty-year-old youth, a disciple of Aristotle, he, by the will of fate, becomes the sovereign king of Macedonia. Immediately he conquered all the Greek city-states, declared himself the son of the Hellenic gods, and at 22 went to war with the Persians, landing at the ruins of Homeric Troy. In the first battle, he defeated the army of Darius, then he cut the Gordian knot in Phrygia, and then the cities of Asia, one after another, began to bow before him, like steppe grass under a gust of wind.
Military successes brought Alexander the Great to Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan, to Cyrenaica and India, to the lands of the Massagets and Caucasian Albania. Everywhere he founded new cities and minted tetradrachms from trophy gold with his proud profile. He became the Pharaoh of Egypt, the ruler of Persia, the king of Syria and Lydia. Alexander, who received the title of the Great Conqueror during his lifetime, was not only a good strategist, but also a dashing warrior. Here we discussed "Pink Panthers" by Alexander the Great and not really Kalash - descendants of the Macedonian army?
As recorded in the marching diary of his campaigns of conquest, the commander was wounded from arrows, clubs, spears, stones fired from a sling. He was wounded many times, lost a lot of blood, caught a cold when crossing rivers, and caught a tropical fever in India.
All this was considered by many ancient historians to be the cause of his early death. But there are other opinions and versions …
Alexander the Great - the greatest conqueror of the ancient world.
Legends, songs and legends about the life, military deeds, death and burial of Alexander the Great remained in the memory of not only the Hellenes, but also the Persians, Hindus, Arabs and even Turks, in whose language his name Iskander means “great warrior”. The Romans recognized him as a demigod and an inhabitant of Olympus. The Arabs still worship him as an Egyptian deity. The Indians took the appearance of the king as a model to represent their main gods in the form of a man. The biblical prophet Daniel considered him one of the predecessors of the Messiah …
According to an ancient Greek legend, in conquered Egypt, the king liked the village of Rakoti behind the island of Pharos. The commander threw his white cloak on the ground there, marking the beginning of the future city. He spent many hours there with architects, military engineers and craftsmen. The city plan was thought out carefully. Alexander himself outlined the locations for squares, temples, libraries, palaces, bazaars and port facilities. The main street of Alexandria still runs where it was drawn by the hand of a commander of all times and peoples …
The king also conceived a gigantic lighthouse, but he did not get to see it - one of the seven wonders of the world. Other things awaited him - campaigns, battles, the founding of cities in the bowels of Asia. And then - an unexpected death at a young age and multiple funerals …
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If the peoples of the ancient world in their legends and traditions are unanimous in assessing the scope of Alexander's military deeds, then they differ greatly on the causes of death and the place of burial. The Persians, whom he mercilessly defeated, became the authors of the version that the commander was punished by heaven for opening the grave of their king Cyrus. The inhabitants of Babylon believed: their conqueror undermined his forces in the gardens of Semiramis, planning new campaigns from Epirus through Carthage to Spain. A mortal cannot do this …
According to the legend of the Macedonian veterans who returned to the Balkans with booty and wounds, their king died from drunkenness and debauchery, forgetting the laws of their ancestors about moderation and restraint. He had 360 Persian concubines. The gods turned away from him, for the king began to walk in the clothes of enemies. They deprived him of his mind, and he began to kill people loyal to him, suspecting of treason and attempts to poison.
The version of poisoning was also considered by Roman historians. They drew attention to the fact that on the return trip from India to Babylon, Alexander fainted for a whole day, suffered from physical impotence and loss of voice. All this may indicate a slow-acting oriental poison. And other ancient historians - Arrian, Diodorus and Plutarch say that the great conqueror was forcibly killed by the secret order of the governor of Macedonia Antipater. He sent poison in the hoof of a mule with a reliable messenger and an order to mix it into the wine. Discontent with the presumptuous conqueror among the Macedonian nobility then reached its limit.
However, one of the completely objective Roman historians does not agree with the version of the poisoning and believes that deep disappointment with the results of the campaign in India and unrestrained drunkenness, aggravated by malaria, brought Alexander to perforation of a stomach ulcer. The symptoms were typical.
One way or another, but on a hot June evening in 323 BC. e. the sun of his life had set in Babylon.
The last years of the king's life are described day after day. The notes were left by court chroniclers, military leaders, as well as Callisthenes, Aristotle's nephew. From these became known the thoughts of Alexander, which worried him during his illness. He admitted that the last campaign had failed, half the world had been conquered, and his faithful friends were confused, and he himself was left with an empty soul and a muddy head from the mysticism of alien religions. He did not build his own house in his homeland, did not leave an heir …
In a stretcher, when he was being dragged to Babylon, he tried to pronounce lines from the Iliad, which he previously knew by heart, but now he got confused, fell into a heavy oblivion. He renounced foreign gods, but at the same time remembered the predictions of the Eastern oracles that he would not return to Macedonia alive. Another divination came to mind. When he seized Persia, in one of the cities his warriors broke into the temple of the Zoroastrians and seized the tablets on which the sacred "Avesta" was written in golden letters. The trophy was taken to Macedonia. It was then that the priests announced his imminent death for savage sacrilege. The Zoroastrians also predicted the punishment for the body of the sinner: "It will know no rest."
When Alexander the Great died, none of his companions even thought about the mummification and burial of the body. For a whole week they held meetings with their soldiers, threw themselves at each other with swords. The division of a huge empire began. Ptolemy, the illegitimate son of Philip, father of Alexander, who was in control of Egypt, suddenly remembered the body and insisted on temporarily burying it in Babylon. So they did, but for two years the companions argued about where to take the golden sarcophagus of their former master on the Triumphal chariot.
Hearse of Alexander the Great.
Finally the sarcophagus was dug up and sent to Macedonia. In Syria, Ptolemy attacked the funeral cortege, by force and bribery took away the "trophy" and quickly moved to Memphis, where he buried it near one of the ancient temples of Amun. Two years later, the body was again dug up and sent in a luxurious boat to Alexandria, which by that time had become a large capital city. Ptolemy ordered to repeat the embalming, placed the body in a new sarcophagus and installed it in the mausoleum in the central square. There is information that it was examined by the Roman emperor Octavian Augustus in 31 BC. e. However, the famous military leader of antiquity was then lying for some reason in a glass sarcophagus …
Over the next centuries, Alexandria was shaken by turmoil, coups, catastrophic events and wars. For example, violent clashes took place between various sects of the early Christians. Alexander for them turned out to be "the king of heretics and pagans." Some historians believe that fanatics stole the sarcophagus of the great conqueror and buried it somewhere deep in the ground. Then the Arabs flooded into Egypt and built a mosque on the site of the mausoleum. This is where everything got completely confused, because the Muslims for many centuries did not allow anyone to enter Alexandria.
Science got a tangle of riddles. Will he unravel? Will there be a grandiose archaeological discovery?
A great many versions of the burial of Alexander the Great have come down to us. All of them are covered with colorful legends. They are contradictory and biased, making it difficult for archaeologists to find. Persian legends claim that the King was buried in Babylon, and an empty sarcophagus was taken to Alexandria. Another eastern legend tells that the body of the commander lay for a long time in the land of Mesopotamia and dissolved in it, abundantly watered by him with human blood. A mummy was sent to the city at the mouth of the Nile, skillfully made by Egyptian craftsmen from resin and reeds …
Macedonian legend says that the veterans gathered a gathering and asked their oracle what to do with the body of the leader. He said that Alexander conquered thirty countries, founded thirty cities and reached the age of thirty, and this, according to the rhythm of the Universe, means that the fate of a great man ended there. Therefore, he must be buried where he was born. The Macedonians, with their usual determination, stole the remains of the tribal leader, replacing them with the corpse of a Greek mercenary from Sparta. The coffin was taken not to the city where Alexander was born, but to Aegeus - the ancient capital with the necropolis of the first kings of Macedonia. According to tribal customs, the corpse was burned at a large fire …
Of course, it is easy to get confused from so many versions. Moreover, sensational statements about the findings of the conqueror's tomb follow one after another. In 1850, word spread around the world that an employee of the Russian consulate in Cairo entered the basement of the Nabi Daniel Mosque in Alexandria and saw through a crack in the foundation wall a transparent sarcophagus where the body of a young man with a royal crown on his head rested.
The sensation wandered through the newspapers for a long time, but scientists gathered for a visit to this mosque only three years later. Naturally, they did not find anything, but they attributed the absence of the sarcophagus to the intrigues of the Arabs, allegedly hiding the ancient mummy …
In 1990, a professor at the Cairo Islamic University, Abdel Aziz, announced that he had calculated the location of the crypt of Alexander the Great. According to his calculations, this was the 139th attempt to find the sarcophagus. He made sure and tried to convince others that the coffin was hidden under the ruins of a mosque in the old part
The place from where the premature sensation spread, the same Egypt, but not Alexandria, but the Sivi oasis on the border with Libya. A quiet place among the sultry sands 700 kilometers west of the mouth of the Nile. In narrow scientific circles, it is now known for the ancient memorial temple of Rami-Amun. Both Alexander the Great and Ptolemy knew it well … The excavations were carried out by the archaeologist from Athens Liana Sovaltsi. Under the foundation of the temple, she discovered a secret passage that stretched as much as 40 meters. They cleared it for several seasons, and at the end they found a room resembling a crypt. But it contained only two stone slabs with inscriptions in ancient Greek. Limestone is badly damaged by time. What we managed to read in the first block refers to Ptolemy I. Alexander the Great is mentioned in the second. But where is he himself? Where, finally, is the golden sarcophagus?
Liana Sovalzi spent six years looking for the beginning of the tunnel leading to the royal crypt. The very idea to explore the ruins of the temple of Amun stemmed not only from historical sources, but also from several ancient legends. For example, one of the Egyptian legends about Alexander the Great contains the prophecy of Theban priests. They insisted on burying the commander, who was ordained as an Egyptian pharaoh, in the side where the sun sets (this is exactly the direction to the Sivi oasis!). If he, remaining an adherent of Amun, would sit on the new throne, would not go on campaigns to the East, but would build his own Alexandria, he would have lived to a ripe old age and would have remained even greater in the memory of the Egyptians, for the creator is always higher than the destroyer …
Liana Sovalzi told British journalists: “What may be the secret grave of Alexander was discovered in Sivi. The sarcophagus itself has not yet been found, but I have in my hands reliable evidence that the last refuge of the commander is here."
The history professors who rushed from Athens at first could not hide their envy of unexpected success, and then, having understood the situation, they said skeptically: “Of course, it smells of Ptolemy here. Perhaps there is a secret family crypt. But so far only dromos has been excavated - the initial corridor. There may be side crypts. But traces of looting can also be expected …"
After that, there was a long pause. But is there any reason to look for Alexander's grave hundreds of kilometers from Alexandria? Yes, there are clues for this. Roman historians, in whose hands were the military diaries of the commander's comrades-in-arms, have a description of the twelfth day of Alexander's illness in Babylon. Then no one believed in his recovery, and the king was asked where he wanted to be buried. A groan escaped his lips, which was taken as an indication of the temple of Amun. Ptolemy, Nearchus and Diadot decided that this meant the distant oasis of Sivi, where there was a very revered temple at that time. By the way, from Memphis, where Ptolemy later brought the sarcophagus, a direct road to the west led to Sivi. In a word, the likelihood that the coffin was in this temple cannot be denied. But the question has not yet been resolved, how long did he stay there?
Alexandria. “He should only be there,” the professor told the press. By the way, the mosque turned out to be the one visited by the employee of the Russian consulate - the temple of the prophet Daniel. In the coffin, as Professor Aziz fervently persuaded, the manuscripts of the famous Library of Alexandria are also hidden - a treasure of ancient wisdom. Of course, in the sarcophagus there are also heaps of treasures - trophies of trips to Asia …
So what's the delay? Why didn't we see sensational photos and TV reports?
But the fact is that the mosque has long been in a dilapidated state, and religious fanatics believe that the ruins are more sacred for them than any new Muslim temple. Therefore, historians with a shovel cannot even come close there.
Multi-engine liners and satellites fly over Alexandria, and age-old laws reign on its land. And here we need not so much a special government decision as the blessing of the top of the local clergy.
In the spring of 1995, another archaeological sensation swept through: "Finally, a tunnel leading to the tomb of the Universe Shaker has been found!" This discovery, according to experts, could overshadow the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun … However, in the spring came summer, then autumn, then the weather became quite cold.
But not a single new message was received. Newspapers began to joke that Alexander was so great that the ends of his body could not be found even 2300 years later. What's the catch?
Another legend, this time Greek, points to the West. The famous ancient seducer from the Ptolemaic clan, Cleopatra, squandered the state's gold fund for jewelry, feasts and other royal excesses, in the end decided to patch a hole in the state budget and chose a very extreme measure. By order of the queen, the court henchmen secretly removed the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great from the mausoleum, melted the gold into ingots and put it into circulation through Roman merchants. The very same mummy of the conqueror was put into a cedar box: they painted it and … hid it. Perhaps to the secret family crypt of the Ptolemies, or perhaps to some other place.
Judging by the abundance of legends, rumors and personal opinions of ancient historians about the burial places of Alexander, Ptolemy I and his descendants had some reason to hide and even hide the sarcophagus. The time was restless, there were popular uprisings, raids of pretenders to Egypt. The exact information melted away in the flow of time, but one of the Arab legends claims that there was a large Greco-Roman cemetery on the western outskirts of Alexandria (now there is the Bab Ash-Sharki residential area). There, as if after numerous reburials, the conqueror of Egypt rested. Two steles were erected over his grave with a list of the countries he conquered and services to Macedonia. It was reburied in the era of the Roman conquests of the Nile Valley. In 1652, this version was recorded by a pilgrim from the Athos monastery. In the early 19th century, French archaeologists searched for this stele, but did not unearth it. Now you can't even dig there.
5 meter marble lion from Amphipolis.
And here's another sensation.
An archaeological find made in the summer of 2014 in northern Greece has been declared “extremely important”. A cordon was set up at the excavation site. There were rumors that scientists managed to find the burial place of the Macedonian kings of the era of Alexander the Great. Perhaps the remains of Roxana, the wife of Tsar Alexander the Great, and maybe the commander himself, will fall into the hands of specialists.
Excavations of a half-kilometer burial mound on the Kasta hill in the northern part of the country caused a real sensation in Greece and gave rise to speculations that the burial may contain the remains of family members of the legendary Macedonian king Alexander the Great.
In any case, most of the Greek media on Tuesday, August 12, 2014, reported a "sensational" find. Even Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras hastened to the excavation site on the banks of the Strimon River in Central Macedonia. Here, not far from the coast of the Aegean Sea, in ancient times was located the ancient Greek city of Amphipolis (Amphipolis).
Three-dimensional reconstruction of a tomb in Amphipolis.
In 357 BC, Amphipolis (as it is sometimes called in Russian historiography) was captured by the king of Macedonia Philip II. It was the father of Alexander III the Great who founded a new mint in the city, which minted staters from the gold of Pangea. During the Argeads dynasty of the Macedonian kings, Amphipolis remained an important naval base and also became one of the most important stations on the royal road through East Macedonia. A Macedonian garrison was located in the city, and Amphipolis became the administrative center of Eastern Macedonia. Here, along with the local Greeks, who constituted the overall majority, lived representatives of noble Macedonian families and Greeks who received Macedonian citizenship.
Sphinxes at the entrance to the tomb in Amphipolis.
The then head of government and former minister of culture, Antonis Samaras, arrived at the excavation site and asked reporters to “be patient for a few days.” From the words of the Greek prime minister, it became clear that we are talking about a burial, which archaeologists date back to about 325-300 BC. The main thing now, according to Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, is to find out the identity of the person buried here.
Historians have suggested that the tomb of Tsar Alexander may be located here. Now they are more inclined to think that we are talking about the grave of his wife, the Bactrian princess Roxana, according to the Greek tabloid press.
Diagram of the excavation site in Amphipolis.
Responsible archaeologist of the Greek Ministry of Culture in the region, Katerina Peristeri, advises not to rush to hasty conclusions. Peristeri does not deny the importance of the find, but without precise evidence of who the grave belonged to, it is too early to say anything, she said during a speech on Greek television.
By all indications, according to the German DPA news agency (DPA), the grave was not robbed. And so archaeologists have begun excavations here. Specialists slowly and carefully removed layer by layer in order to get inside the burial.
Excavations in 2014 revealed three underground rooms to the world. Descending in them is met by a pair of winged sphinxes, once painted in bright colors. In the next aisle, there are two caryatids - statues of girls in long tunics.
Behind them, the entire floor of the room is covered with amazing mosaics. She depicts Hades, the ancient Greek god of the underworld, who kidnaps the goddess Persephone in his chariot. The god Hermes is watching everything.
Floor mosaic of a tomb in Amphipolis.
In the third and last room, a grave was hidden under the limestone slabs. In it, in a wooden, richly inlaid coffin, the body rested. Considering the sumptuous statues and mosaic floors, experts believe that this was the tomb of a very important man of royal blood, or rather, the warrior king Alexander the Great himself.
The skeleton found is that of a man of average height, with pale skin and brown or red hair. This suggests that the remains may well belong to the blue-eyed blonde Alexander the Great.
Currently, the skeleton is undergoing DNA analysis to find out the person's involvement in the Macedonian royal family. Scientists also want to know his age, because it is known that Alexander died at thirty-two years old.
Theories about skeletal personality vary. Some experts speculate that the remains may belong to Alexander's son or half-brother. It could also be one of Alexander's closest assistants. Unfortunately, the robbers took away a number of valuable artifacts, so the most reliable clues have disappeared.
Currently, geophysicists are using scanners to scan the rest of the hill to determine if there are other underground chambers underneath. Inside the three rooms of the tomb, archaeologists still find multi-colored decorations and elements of statues: iron and bronze nails, carved bone, glass decorations.