Category: Alexander the Great

If It’s Tuesday, Alexander’s Grave Must Be In …

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 3 Comments

FYROM … er … Macedonia … er … somewhere it has no business being. Or at least that’s the impression we’re being given from a couple of sources. First, MINA came out with this tantalizingly brief brief:

MiNa was not able to verify this information with the Macedonian Government nor with archeologists in Skopje, and are removing the text from “City Magazine” until further notice. Although there may be a chance ‘City Magazine’ is right, taking into account their elaborate piece, and there maybe a chance and a good reason for Macedonia to keep this secret, if we can’t verify the information, then it’s not news. To sum up, ‘City Magazine’ claims the Macedonian Government had found the grave of Alexander the Great in the Visje area (near Gevgelija) close to the border with Greece.

Then, the Bulgarian Focus came out with a typically-strangely translated piece (which expresses skepticism, interestingly enough):

Macedonian archaeologist Pasco Kuzman comments to FOCUS News Agency information released by online Macedonian edition and drawn from Serbian blog, which says that the tomb of Alexander the Great has been found at the Greek-Macedonian border with the following words:
“If it is true – it is a big lie. If it is a lie – it is a great truth. Multiplied, it is equal to zero.”
That was the answer of the question weather it is late April’s joke.
***

Macedonian Cyrillic edition published today, a text set out in Belgrade blog City Magazine, which contains a “stunt” for the discovery of the tomb of Alexander of Macedonia, which would have changed the history. Macedonian Edition offers readers the text on the matter stating that perhaps it’s a fictional story of a blogger.
“During reconstruction works on Visie border checkpoint between Macedonia and Greece / officially there is no such border checkpoint – FOCUS notices/, construction workers from” Build ” company uncovered one of the biggest mysteries of antiquity. The discovery has been found in digging of geodesic markers, and then with the permission of building inspectors it led to further construction activities. It was necessary to remove a large stone to dig further in order to make analysis on the ground. After the stone was removed, a granite slab appeared. Thinking that it was a buried wealth from the time of the Ottoman Empire, driver of the excavator began to dig together with his colleagues. Two hours later it became clear that it was a marble building, 30 meters long and four wide, the edition reads further. After descriptions of the finding the Director of the General Inspectorate of the Republic of Macedonia Goce Micevski from the National Museum /there is not such a museum – FOCUS notices/ and experts stated in a joint statement that in the Crypt was found well preserved skeleton with full outfit with gold-bronze armor and shit and mask, which was engraved with the name Alexander.
Journalists were promised to have a press conference in the afternoon, and meanwhile the text quoted the words of the workers involved in the excavations. /The text didn’t mention a date or even a day of a week – FOCUS notices/

FOCUS New Agency recalls:

Pasco Kuzman is Macedonian archaeologist, director of the Institute for the cultural heritage of Macedonia. He took part in restoration works of the historical complex Samuilova fortress in Ohrid.

Of course, there is no possibility that this has to do with the whole FYROM/Macedonia/Greece thing (he said, sarcastically … we need a smiley to denote sarcasm). The sad thing is that there will be piles of folk who buy into this … we’ll wait with bated breath to see if a major news source picks this up. We’re still waiting for pictures of that Bactrian inscription mentioned last week, by the way …

Alexander the Great Inscription?

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 2 Comments

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 …

Alexander the Great’s Tomb … In Australia?

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 1 Comment

When I first read this I had to double check the calendar and make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day … it wasn’t, but apparently it was a very slow news day for the ABC folks … or perhaps it was a very busy day for something so freakin’ bizarre to make it past the editors’ desks … whatever the case, my mailbox is being filled with this thing and the incipit should be enough … gentlemen (and ladies), start your gag reflexes:

Alexander the Great, whose tomb has been missing for nearly 2,000 years, could be buried in Broome in Western Australia, a Perth man says.

Macedonian-born Tim Tutungis told ABC Kimberley that he first heard the ‘Broomer’ from his old mate, Lou Batalis.

“We just got onto the subject of Alexander The Great’s tomb, and he said, ‘They’ll never ever find it, no matter where they look, because Alexander the Great is buried in Broome, in Western Australia’,” Mr Tutungis said.

“Approximately 50 years ago, some guy went into a cave in Broome and he saw some inscriptions in there and they looked like ancient Greek.

“He reported it to the government, then the government went and saw it and they confirmed there were some inscriptions there.

“They went to the Greek community and they asked the community, ‘Is there anyone here who can read ancient Greek?’

“Naturally Louis Batalis put his hand up and said, ‘Yes, I went to school in Egypt, I got educated, I can read it’. So they took him up there and he defined the inscriptions as saying, in ancient Greek, ‘Alexander the Great’.

“The government did say to him at that time, ‘You didn’t see this, OK, this never happened’.”

I don’t know what’s more bizarre here: that a Macedonian’s bona fides for reading ancient Greek is that he went to school in Egypt or the implication that the Australian government is involved in some sort of coverup of the ‘true’ location of Alexander’s burial … Oh what the heck, here’s the conclusion to the piece (I’ve skipped the bit where they give some traditional “stories” about what happened to Alexander’s body):

Mr Tutungis says he is 99 per cent convinced Mr Batalis told him the truth, because people “have looked everywhere” for Alexander’s grave, to no avail.

He says his friend is a very old man now and has virtually lost his memory, and others who heard the story had dismissed it.

But he says Mr Batalis was “a man of substance” who was very educated, and the story stuck with him.

“I drew my own conclusion because the war of the Macedonians ended up in India and I assumed that some of the soldiers went back to Macedonia on foot,” Mr Tutungis said.

“Some of the soldiers must have caught a ship. Why can’t we say that Alexander did catch a ship; they lost their way in the treacherous ways up there.

“Look where India is, look where Broome is; a ship could easily get wrecked in Broome.”

Mr Tutungis says a new documentary suggests that when the war ended, Alexander the Great ordered thousands of ships to built.

He takes that as further evidence to support his theory and has written to a detective from Scotland Yard who is looking for Alexander’s grave.

“Nobody ever, ever suspected that Alexander could have died in Broome,” he said.

The sound you hear is the minds of hundreds of rogueclassicism readers’ minds boggling …

The Height of Alexander

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 1 Comment

A review of Simon Sebag-Montefiore , Heroes: History’s Greatest Men and Women at Mercator.net concludes thusly:

There was one glaring error: Alexander the Great’s height is given as 4’ 6”; but would make him the same height as the crippled poet Alexander Pope, and is never mentioned by the ancient authorities; surely the author means 5’ 6”, similar to Napoleon’s and quite a respectable stature?

I’m not sure we know what height Alexander was … over at Pothos.org there’s a reasonable guess of 5’6” or 5’7” …