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Interview with Theodore G. Antikas: “the female cremated with Philip II could be the daughter of the Scythian king Ateas”

By Mediterraneo Antiguo

Remains in the larnax of the main chamber.
Photo: Vergina: The Royal Tombs (Andronikos, 1984)

In 1977, Manolis Andronikos discovered a cluster of Temenid burials at Vergina, ancient Aegae, under the Great Tumulus. Tomb II was unlooted, doublé chambered and each chamber had a sarcophagus housing a gold larnax (casket) that contained the cremated bones of a man and a woman, respectively. The kings body was cremated in a great pyre, in the same way as epic heroes of the Iliad. A huge pile of half-burnt mud bricks, ashes, charcoal, and hundreds of burnt objects covered the whole length of the tomb's barrel-vaulted roof. The presence of this pyre was the clearest evidence that the CONTINUE THE READING

Article – Is the mother of Alexander the Great in the Tomb of Amphipolis? (Part IV)

I wrote my initial article on this question on the morning of 6th September, a day before the announcement of the discovery of the caryatids, and I wrote a second part on 20th September and a third part on 28th September dealing with the Caryatids. The discovery of the mosaic announced yesterday has prompted this fourth article, but in order to set it in context I first offer the following summary of the inferences I drew from the evidence available in my first three articles:

Article – Is the mother of Alexander the Great in the Tomb of Amphipolis? (Part III)

I wrote my initial article on this question on the morning of 6th September (a day before the announcement of the discovery of the caryatids) and I wrote a second part, dealing with the caryatids and a few other issues on 20th September. In these two articles I drew a number of inferences from the evidence available:1) Sphinxes decorated the thrones found in the tombs of two mid to late 4th century BC queens of Macedon, one of whom was Alexander’s grandmother Eurydice I

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Article – Is the mother of Alexander the Great in the tomb at Amphipolis (Part II)

I wrote my initial article on this question on the morning of 6th September (a day before the announcement of the discovery of the caryatids) and I drew a number of inferences from the evidence then available:
1) Sphinxes decorated the thrones found in the tombs of two mid to late 4th century BC queens of Macedon, one of whom was Alexander’s grandmother Eurydice I
2) Greek mythology recognised Hera the wife of Zeus as the mistress of the sphinx: the 4th century BC Macedonian kings identified themselves with Zeus, so it would make sense for their principal queens to have
identified themselves with Hera

Interview with Francisco Javier Gómez Espelosin:

“the Greeks never saw Alejandro as a deliverer, but as a tyrant”

The figure of Alexander the great It marked a before and an after in ancient times. The Macedonian King changed the balance of power in the Mediterranean and opened the doors of the relations between East and West, giving rise to a cultural current of great vigor: the Hellenism. However, are relatively few historical sources about her figure, What has dyed his biography of a mythical aura amplified, above all, After the publication of the “Life and feats of Alejandro de Macedonia”, of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, of century III d.C. Ancient Mediterranean He wanted to delve into the personality of this character from the hand of Francisco Javier Gómez Espelosin, Professor of the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares and author of one of the best biographies on Alejandro that you have written in recent times.

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Interview with Nicholas J. Saunders

the best qualified people to interpret Amphipolis tomb are the professional Greek archaeologists now excavating it

Access to the tomb, with two great sphynx. Photo: Hellenic Ministry of Culture

Regarding the great Amphipolis tomb, Greece, have been already written many lines, although the research team led by Katerina Peristeri has not finished yet the excavation of the site, discovered in 2012. Mediterráneo Antiguo has sought to find an authoritative voice, Nicholas J. Saunders, professor at the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol, author of The tomb of Alexander in 2006, published in Spain by Editorial Planeta in 2007 and one of the most importants recent studies about the question of the tomb of Alexander the Great. Here is our conversation with him.

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The Earliest Europeans

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK—DNA from the ulna of a modern human skeleton discovered in 1954 at an archaeological site at Kostenki-Borshchevo, located in southwest Russia, has been mapped by a team of scientists led by evolutionary biologist East Wilerslev of the Natural History Museum at the University of Copenhagen. The skeleton has been dated to between 36,200 and 38,700 years old, making the genome the second oldest to be sequenced. This new data suggests that this man, who had dark skin and dark eyes, had DNA from European indigenous hunter-gatherers, people from the Middle East who later became early farmers, and western Asians. It had been thought that these three groups only mixed in the past 5,000 years. "What is surprising is this guy represents one of the earliest Europeans, but at the same time he basically contains all the genetic components that you find in contemporary Europeans—at 37,000 years ago,"Willerslev told Science. The man, known as Kostenki XIV and as Marina Gora, also had about one percent more Neanderthal DNA than todays Europeans and Asians, from modern human and Neanderthal contact more than 45,000 years ago. "In principle, you just have sex with your neighbor and they have it with their next neighbor—you don't need to have these armies of people moving around to spread the genes,"Willerslev explained.

Source: Archaeology Magazine

Submarine of Alexander the Great

“The Arab historian Mas’ûdî has preserved (see Les Prairies d’Or, ed. B. de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille, Paris, 1861, tom. ii. p. 425 ff) a curious legend of the talismans which were employed by Alexander the Great to protect the city of Alexandria whilst it was being built, and as the legend is of Egyptian origin, and dates from a period not greatly removed from that in which the Metternich stele was made, it is worthy of mention.

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