As often with items from Bulgaria, something seems to have been lost in translation. An initial report from the Focus news agency suggested:
Unique marble slab with the image of Alexander the Great and a passage of an inscription was discovered in archaeological excavations in the ancient Baktriya, Baktriya Press Agency informed.
The slab represents an ancient king on a horse heading Macedonian cavalry and Macedonian phalanx at the background.
An inscription written in an ancient language different from ancient Greek or ancient Egyptian languages, on which were written a large part of the stone inscriptions at the time of Alexander is placed from the right of the military arena. According to other assumptions the words of Alexander of Macedonia are written in baktriyan language protolanguage of today’s Bulgarians.
According to archaeologists from the museum in the town of Balh – the baktriyan language is a language, which had been spoken by the soldiers of Alexander of Macedonia, which had unified languages and dialects in his multinational army. Found fragments of ancient Greek inscription at the same site, suggest a possible parallel text.
An hour after that was posted, the same agency posted:
Inscriptions found in Baktria confirmed all my theses that I put in the book Alexander of Macedonia and the Bulgarians. Colleagues were able to assemble the parts of the inscription and read it. Director of the National History Museum Prof. Bozhidar Dimitrov told FOCUS News Agency.
Prof. Dimitrov told that the inscription really say that Alexander of Macedonia has failed to win Baktrian army and therefore his soldiers were married 10 thousand Baktrian girls thus the Bulgarian people had been formed. “In the Greek text soldiers who opposed the Alexander hadn’t been called Baktrian and have been called Bulgaro. The ancient Macedonians whatever they had been, had mixed with ancient Baktrians and so the Bulgarian people had been formed”, Professor Dimitrov announced.
Surely we’ll hear more of this if there’s an actual image of Alexander …
Laughable! Just coarse Bulgarian nationalism… I wonder why they are in the European Union. This sort of discourse is 19th century archaeological jingoism.
Is this an April Fools joke?