What do we know today about the tomb of Alexander the Great?
Historical reference
According to material from Wikipedia:
The tomb of Alexander the Great was erected at the very end of the 4th century BC. e.
According to one of the most common versions, the body of the commander was placed in a golden coffin, after which it was filled with honey. First, the coffin was taken to Memphis, then to Alexandria (Egypt), where it remained until the end of the period of antiquity, after which it disappeared. It is believed that the famous Romans visited the tomb of Alexander: Pompey, Caesar, Octavian Augustus, Caligula.
In addition, there is the so-called sarcophagus of Alexander, which is actually the sarcophagus of the Sidonian king Abdolanim.
The biographer of Alexander the Great Kalsinias wrote that the great commander bequeathed to bury himself in Egypt, where the priests of the ancient temple proclaimed him the son of Amun. Perdiccas promised Alexander to do this, but then decided to take the body of the king to Macedonia. His plan failed. In 321 BC. e. Ptolemy, having met the chariot in Damascus, kidnapped the sarcophagus with the body of Alexander and transported it to Memphis. According to Plutarch, a few years later, Ptolemy transported him to Alexandria, burying him in an underground tomb. Alexander's grave became a place of mass pilgrimage. In 48 BC. e. Caesar visited Alexander's grave. The Roman emperor Octavian Augustus, when he captured Alexandria, "examined the body of the Great Alexander, whose coffin was taken out of the sanctuary: as a sign of admiration, he laid a golden crown on it and showered the body with flowers," writes Suetonius. According to Cassius Dio, Octavian broke off the mummy's nose with an awkward movement. The body lay in a glass sarcophagus, and the mausoleum was in the central square. According to Suetonius, Caligula also visited Alexander's grave, who personally took off Alexander's breastplate, and then wore it himself. Caracalla, who visited Alexandria in the 210s, laid his tunic and ring on the tomb of the great conqueror Finally, the soldier emperor Septimius Sever ordered the sacred tomb to be walled up, and since then it is not known where it is. According to the Kiev Archimandrite Constantine, who tried in 1803 find the grave of Alexander, until the 15th century its location was well known. Caligula also visited the grave of Alexander, who personally removed the bib from Alexander, and then wore it himself. Caracalla, who visited Alexandria in the 210s, laid his tunic and ring on the tomb of the great conqueror Finally, the soldier emperor Septimius Sever ordered the sacred tomb to be walled up, and since then it is not known where it is. According to the Kiev Archimandrite Constantine, who tried in 1803 find the grave of Alexander, until the 15th century its location was well known. Caligula also visited the grave of Alexander, who personally removed the bib from Alexander, and then wore it himself. Caracalla, who visited Alexandria in the 210s, laid his tunic and ring on the tomb of the great conqueror Finally, the soldier emperor Septimius Sever ordered the sacred tomb to be walled up, and since then it is not known where it is. According to the Kiev Archimandrite Constantine, who tried in 1803 find the grave of Alexander, until the 15th century its location was well known.where it is. According to the Kiev archimandrite Constantine, who tried to find Alexander's grave in 1803, its location was well known until the 15th century.where it is. According to the Kiev archimandrite Constantine, who tried to find Alexander's grave in 1803, its location was well known until the 15th century.
Dorotheos, Bishop of Tire (255–362 AD), returning after exile, declared that the inhabitants of the Siwa oasis in Egypt were pagans and worshiped the Egyptian god Amun and Alexander the Great, who were buried there.
Promotional video:
Sisoy the Great, who lived in a cave in the Egyptian Desert, is always portrayed as reflecting on the futility of life and the inevitability of death near the tomb of Alexander the Great.
Now, summing up, let's imagine the burial place of Alexander the Great.
1. Egypt? Maybe. Alexander the Great bequeathed to bury himself there, and the will of the dying, besides the king, is sacred.
2. Siwa Oasis is a presumptive burial site, excavations are still underway there, that is, most modern researchers consider this place the most likely.
3. Golden coffin. Tsar, of course, gold! However, it was later called a sarcophagus, they confuse it with another sarcophagus. In addition, if the case takes place in Egypt, then it becomes clear why the sarcophagus, since sarcophagi were made for all the pharaohs.
"Glass sarcophagus" - possibly with the use of glass, since glass was a rarity at that time, the historian wanted to emphasize.
4. Placed a golden “crown” (something like a headdress)
5. The body is in honey (or honey was used) - honey does not allow bacteria to pass through, which means that it is a good preservative, that is, the body was mummified, Egypt is still a standard procedure for mummifying a deceased pharaoh. Although, for example, the same Plutarch was sure that he was embalmed back in Babylon.
6. Flowers "in the coffin". Presumably, Augustus Octavian covered his body with flowers.
7. The burial place was known in antiquity and was a place of pilgrimage - presumably in the Egyptian desert, where a hermit lived.
8. Emperor Septimius Sever walled up the entrance to the sacred tomb.
9. Reconstruction (composite image) of the hearse of Alexander the Great from the words of Diodorus. (C. 90 - 30 BC) - ancient Greek historian.
10. And, finally, you can refer to the history of diseases of Alexander the Great, to roughly know how his body should look like.
The height was about 160 cm.
The ancient Greek philosopher Plutarch gave a whole list of wounds received by Alexander:
Under Granicus, his helmet was hacked with a sword that penetrated to the hair
under Issom - a sword in the thigh
near Gaza he was wounded in the shoulder with a dart
near Marakanda - an arrow to the shin so that a split bone protruded from the wound;
in Hyrcania - with a stone in the back of his head, after which his eyesight deteriorated, and for several days he remained under the threat of blindness;
in the field of Assakans - with an Indian spear in the ankle
In the area of the mulls, an arrow two cubits long, piercing the carapace, wounded him in the chest so badly that air came out of the holes left after the arrow (the lungs were pierced - ed.)
in the same place … he was hit on the neck with a club (trauma of the spine and / or the back of the head - ed.).
In general, there were a great many different wounds, cuts and scars on his body, for, as we can learn from the works of the ancient Greek historian Arrian, Alexander was one of the first to fight in many battles.
Alexander, like his father, Philip, suffered from a scoliotic disorder of the cervical vertebrae. (Scoliosis is a curvature of the spine.)
The king's neck was twisted so that it seemed as if he was looking up at an angle all the time.
Alexander was short by Macedonian standards, but he also had a stocky and sinewy build.
His beard grew poorly, which distinguished him from the rest of the Macedonian nobility.
Cause of death - for many centuries it was believed that the great military leader of antiquity Alexander the Great died in June 323 BC. e. at the age of 33, presumably from malaria.
Now try again to imagine the grave of Alexander the Great
How do you imagine her?
The grave could be different from our expectations, right? …
As the saying goes, "expectation is …, reality is …".
Maybe a golden coffin with glass, honey, a golden crown, flowers appear before my eyes. Perhaps a grave with a hearse, perhaps there are injuries to the body (if the body was mummified, or maybe it is a mummy?), To the skeleton, characteristic of the injuries received
And what would the results of the DNA research of Alexander the Great show us?
Would you show the gallogroup of a European?
Are there traces of malaria in the remains?
conclusions
Considering that he bequeathed to bury himself in Egypt, the question arises: Where are people buried?
- At the cemetery! - you say.
Now the next question:
And where to bury the king of Egypt?
- At the royal cemetery.
- Is there such a cemetery?
Yes, there is and it is called "Valley of the Kings", where the Pharaohs were buried. The cemetery is in Luxor (Egypt), the old name is Phi? va (from ancient Greek - Θ? βαι) is not it consonant with the word "Siwa"?
The Valley of the Kings is a real Egyptian desert (remember the drawing by Sisoy the Great). There are also caves …
It turns out that you should just normally look for the tomb in the Valley of the Kings and that's it? And she will definitely be found?
But what if they found her a long time ago, just didn't recognize her?
At first glance, this is impossible - this is too well-known person, about whom absolutely everything is known. But in history, everything happened, then the Earth turned out to be round, then the Sun around the Earth, then vice versa. What if …
I believe that the embalmed body, or simply the mummy, and, accordingly, the contents of the tomb found in the Valley of the Kings under the number KB62 in 1922, for almost 100 years exactly correspond to the description of the ancient historians about the tomb of Alexander the Great and that these are his remains.
What's behind this boring number?
And this place is better known as the tomb of Tutankhamun …
Now I will try to prove this using ordinary logic.
1. Tutankhamun was found in Egypt.
2. Thebes (Siwa) sounds like it is mixed up, distorted. cemetery of the kings or Valley of the kings.
3. Golden coffin - a golden sarcophagus, one and only.
Glass - Tutankhamun's mask is decorated with carnelian, lapis lazuli, colored glass and quartz.
4. In the tomb there was a vessel with honey (in the sarcophagus itself, apparently, it dried up, after all, the lid was not tightly closed), from which honey was added to the coffin as needed.
5. Golden crown. The "crown" is the famous "mask" of Tutankhamun, it is also called the breastplate worn by Caligula.
6. Flowers - a wreath of flowering cornflowers and daisies was put on the mummy's neck. (Octavian Augustus "showered" flowers on the body.)
7. Luxor - the former Thebes is an oasis in the desert, of course there are caves
8. His tomb, in contrast to the burials of other kings of Ancient Egypt, remained unlooted. (It was "walled up" with tons of construction waste, thanks to which it turned out to be the only one not looted)
9. Hearse of Alexander the Great and the so-called "ark" of Tutankhamun.
Comparison of a hearse and Tutankhamun's ark.
The ark was 5 m long, 3.3 m wide and 2.73 m high.
There are 4 of them, These enormous "containers" are unique.
No other similar monuments have survived.
10. Medical indicators:
• the nature of the damage to the skeleton;
• DNA;
• cause of death.
Tutankhamun was about 167 cm tall.
Scoliosis and corset.
Among his things is a corset. Now it is assumed that this is a protective corset for hunting, but recalling the ancient reports of Alexander the Great's scoliosis, it seems to me that this corset may be from scoliosis. It is located in the Cairo National Museum.
Traces of a fracture of the femur of the left leg
what happened shortly before death and not healed, an overly elongated skull.
An X-ray study of the mummy revealed interesting facts - a "wandering" splinter of bone in the skull and a seal at the base of the skull, which could have been the result of a strong blow to the head from behind. Anomalies of the thin bones above the eye sockets of the skull could occur with a head injury as a result of falling to the ground on its back, with a sharp movement of the shift of the brain forward (blow to the back of the head), which could cause vision problems.
The scientist, Richard Boyer, came to the conclusion that Tutankhamun suffered from Klippel-Feil syndrome, a rare congenital disease that not only damaged his regal posture, but also greatly impeded walking and head movement.
the absence of the sternum, as well as the ribs of the anterior part of the chest.
Researchers who studied Tutankhamun named the following causes of his death:
1) open leg fracture.
2) trauma to the skull.
3) scoliosis.
In 2010, the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) the results of more than two years of genetic research, during which it became apparent that Tutankhamun died from complications caused by a combination of malaria and Kohler's disease (inflammation of the bones of the foot) …
This finding is supported by 103 walking sticks and jars of malaria medicine found in his tomb.
European DNA trace of "Tutankhamun"
A recent DNA study carried out by the iGENEA Institute in Zurich in July 2011 reconstructed Tutankhamun's genetic profile.
According to scientists, “Pharaoh Tutankhamun belonged to a genetic profile known as the R1b1a2 halogroup, of which more than 50% of males in Western Europe are represented, indicating that they have a common ancestor.
Interestingly, less than 1% of the current Egyptian population belongs to this group.”
The proportion of possible descendants of Tutankhamun among the Spaniards and the British rises to 70%.
Other "unusual"
Many mummies of kings from this period lie with their arms crossed high on their chest.
Tutankhamun's hands, on the other hand, were located closer to the waist.
The mummy "Tutankhamun" differs from other mummies of that time in that it was cut from the navel to the left side, while others had a small cut on one side.
Large umbilical incisions, like his, began to be made 650 years later.
the doors of the arks are facing not to the west, as required by the ritual, where, according to the Egyptians, the abode of the dead was located, but to the east. gilding was damaged during assembly with a hammer or some other tool, parts were even beaten off in some places, shavings remained uncleared.
Perhaps that is why it was dismantled back, by order of Augustus?
Conclusions of the police forensic experts involved in the "case of Tutankhamun":
obvious violations of the funeral ritual adopted for the pharaohs, tiny size and incompleteness of the tomb.
The tomb of Tutankhamun was simply primitive and, most likely, was intended for another person, of a lower rank.
The walls were painted hastily, very casually.
Some of the artifacts had their inscriptions erased and replaced with the name of Tutankhamun.
Then more questions arise:
And whose tomb is it?
What are the two mummies of little girls that the Egyptian authorities have not advertised for a long time?
Moreover, the DNA of one (for some reason not both) of them confirms that her father was the mummy "Tutankhamun".
I think the answer is also in history.
According to the Macedonian legend, the Macedonians somehow stole the remains of Alexander (where they stole - not specified), replaced them with the corpse of a Greek mercenary from Sparta, and the coffin was taken to Aegi, the ancient capital of Macedonia, and, according to custom, burned the body on a large fire. It turns out that there is neither a coffin nor a grave at all. Agree that the version is somehow poor.
I think the opposite happened. The remains of this Greek mercenary were taken home and burned, and the crypt was taken under the tomb of Alexander, hence the conclusions of criminologists that it was as if the tomb had not been hastily altered for him. And the girls are the children of that same mercenary from Sparta. They are local, they were left, hence the DNA coincidence of one of them, the father was also a European in DNA.
Where did Alexander's armor go?
In 2008, the University of Pennsylvania reported that the grave in the village of Vergina in northern Greece belonged to Alexander's half-brother Philip III Arridaeus, National Geographic News reported. Among the artifacts were found a helmet, a shield and a silver crown. Researchers believe that these things belonged to Alexander himself, because after his death his brother took them.
If this is actually his brother, then his DNA will show a close relationship with "Tutankhamun", which once again confirms my statement.
Author: Sadykov Zhumabek