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The biggest problem with the Alexander cenotaph/heroon theory is that it fails to explain why anyone (let alone Cassander in 316BC) put in two vertical sealing walls and one horizontal sealing floor plus thousands of tonnes of riverbed sand to prevent entry to an empty monument. It would be madness. The walls and the fill are signposting very clearly that there is something of "radioactive" potency sitting in there. It is hard to imagine given the tomb context that that could be anything but the bones of somebody with a politically threatening cult following. Another problem is that Cassander clearly hoped to effect a reconciliation with the royal family in 316BC. He valued associating himself with the royal family by marrying Thessalonike and he did not at that point murder the king or his mother. It would have completely scuppered any such reconciliation for him to have wrecked Alexander's cenotaph in 316BC.amyntoros wrote:Not my theory, but one from "Bannister" who posted on Dorothy King's blog on October 28th:Taphoi wrote:...That means that the desecration (door smashing, mutilation of sphinxes etc.) was simultaneous with the sealing and perpetrated by the same person. That fits Cassander for the tomb of Olympias after the murder of her grandson. Can anyone suggest another historical context in the early Hellenistic period? I think it is difficult otherwise to explain simultaneous desecration and sealing, which looks to be emerging from the archaeology.
Now if Olympias did indeed order Aristonous to build a Heroon dedicated to Alexander then it is quite believable that Cassander would have destroyed it after having her killed. Also, this does come closer to answering the question, "why Amphipolis?" Not that I'm supporting this theory in particular - I think it foolish to wholeheartedly and unquestionably declare for an occupant (or otherwise) without full knowledge of a completed evacuation. And even then, there may be no definitive conclusion.The origin of these damages seems to me bound to an eminently political reason: the will of the Roman, after the defeat of Perseus to Pydna, to erase of the surface of the Macedonian ground any symbol of resistance which could anchor in history.
But it is not either impossible, considering the hatred dedicated by Cassander to Alexander, to her mother and to its descent, that the destructions took place from the fall of Olympias.
The Roman thus walled up the accesses to the grave which, you are right, is probably a Heroon dedicated to Alexandre and built at the request of Olympias by Aristonous - then governor of Amphipolis - and Deinocrates.
The fact that fragments of statues such as heads and wings of Sphinges has been found in the third chamber confirms from my point of view that plunderers not only wished to erase but also to hide: shame is the sister of anger.
Cassander had no choice but to pursue reconciliation if he allowed Alexander IV to live. Whilst he lived neither the generals of the empire nor the Macedonian people would accept any other king. The conference in 311BC where the generals affirmed that power would be passed to Alexander IV shows that clearly. Whilst he lived he might have become king in fact as well as in name, so Cassander could not afford not to seek reconciliation. Your logic demands that Cassander should have murdered Alexander IV in 316BC. He did not.agesilaos wrote:There is absolutely no reason to posit that Kassandros was seeking any reconciliation with the remaining Argeads, he stripped Alexander IV of his royal trappings and confined him and his mother to Amphipolis under the tender care of Glaukias, since both had been party to the regicide of Philip III, having been in Olympias' coterie, this was a concession to the king's age and a nod to the total unimportance of the pair. A forced marriage with Thessalonike might be designed to signal reconciliation with those formerly sympathetic to Olympias and the Argaeads, but the aim is to separate them from that allegiance not to conciliate himself with the defeated faction. Diodoros is clear that Kassandros began from the moment of Olympias' death to behave like he was king, this is not the action of some conciliator but of a usurper, and judging from the compliance of the Macedonians a popular one.
The walls are there to retain the fill which was there to preclude further collapse; no sinister motives other than in 'creative modern interpretation.'
The graves were complete not scattered; and a natural mound is still a mound.
Zebedee has I think hedged his theory with sufficient caveats; he has not introduced a Mills and Boon Kassandros, moved Olympias' death from Pydna, wher the sources and epigraphy seem to place it nor has he given a king stripped of the trappings of kingship its wealth and power, all of which you continue to do to support your implausible theory, keep re-butting. The archaeology is consistent with any date from c340 to c240 BC and until proper evidence is released the range will remain that large.
Yet apparently destroying that most beautiful and extraordinarily large tomb of Olympias (your theory) had no effect on Cassander's attempt at reconciliation, unless you are saying that Cassander waited until after the death of Alexander IV. If that is the case then he could also have waited if it was a Heroon to Alexander. (Again, not saying it was, just saying it's a viable theory.) And wouldn't destroying a memorial/temple for Alexander also have affected your presumed "pursuit of reconciliation"? Which brings me to another point - reconciliation with whom? The people or the royal family?Taphoi wrote:
Cassander had no choice but to pursue reconciliation if he allowed Alexander IV to live. Whilst he lived neither the generals of the empire nor the Macedonian people would accept any other king. The conference in 311BC where the generals affirmed that power would be passed to Alexander IV shows that clearly. Whilst he lived he might have become king in fact as well as in name, so Cassander could not afford not to seek reconciliation.
I have gone back and edited the introductory sentence to this paragraph a number of times and have finally decided to go with: NO, NO, NO, No, No, No, No, No! No one is saying that one shouldn't speculate. No one is being absurd. No one is challenging the principle of free speech. And those that have argued against a particular occupant have NOT committed themselves just as much as those, i.e. yourself, who have argued for one.Taphoi wrote: There is no reason not to speculate on the occupant: that too is an absurdity that appears to challenge the principle of free speech. Those that have argued against a particular occupant have committed themselves just as much as those that have argued for one.
I'm happy to make that explicit - so far as we know, the mound is late C4th over an earlier burial site. So far as we know now, the tomb in question here is late C4th. The dating evidence is, however, still dependent on the calls made by the archaeologists on the site so may still be wider in scope than has so far been suggested. I think Rhesos is unlikely but not wildly so. The main issue is that which agesilaos repeated and that one would expect the cult site to be within the city walls, although I'd question the precise meaning of the text which has come down to us if I were to be evangelical over remote possibilites. There's an interesting theory that the play itself may be much later than usually given and actually date from the Macedonian period but that's klnd of by-the-by. The Hagnon era monuments appear to have been (and are indeed recorded as being) destroyed around the time Sparta took control of Amphipolis and then we have a break at what is presumed to be the cult site for Brasidas which may date to the Macedonian occupation. So looking for continuity of anything may be something of a fruitless task, let alone trying to pin down the precise dating of when some cults were operating and when they were not. There is no dating conflict, especially not if one is aware that a cult site/burial site/heroon and a memorial could co-exist either side of the city walls or at different places at the same time (eg Athenian tyrannicides). It is unlikely, but there's no need to torture limited evidence in the hope of finding a major rebuttal which doesn't exist. This tomb is unrecorded so by definition is outside of the evidence so far as we know.Taphoi wrote: This is anyway beside the point. Zebedee is not suggesting that the Kasta mound is 5th century BC. He is implicitly agreeing that it is early Hellenistic and he is hypothesising an unrecorded re-reburial of Rhesos into this mound in the early Hellenistic period. Yet another problem for this prospect is that the mention by Marsyas appears to be referring to the 5th century BC reburial, but was written probably around 300BC and Zebedee needs to hypothesise that the re-reburial of Rhesos happened in the last quarter of the 4th century BC to be consistent with the archaeology.
Best wishes,
Andrew
It is Taphoi rather than Amyntoros who is missing something, obviously!!The mound is early Hellenistic because the precisely circular peribolos wall is early Hellenistic and the mound must be later than the wall. Therefore the earlier burials are all part of the pre-existing cemetery in the soil beneath the mound. Nothing says that earlier burials were embedded within the mound.amyntoros wrote:Am I missing something?
Best wishes,
Andrew
Taphoi is wrong, and Agesilaos right – the Hellenistic retaining wall must have been built to contain the mound and hence after the mound, not before. Indeed this is plausibly needed precisely because the mound could have been enlarged....Agesilaos wrote:
The walls are there to retain the fill which was there to preclude further collapse; no sinister motives other than in 'creative modern interpretation.'
The graves were complete not scattered; and a natural mound is still a mound.
Which raises an important point. If the ‘sand fill’ is the same material as the mound that suggests it might have got there by the known seismic activity over the centuries rather than by human action....Agesilaos wrote:
I am not sure that the fill is uniform rather than part silt and part sand, like the mound, otherwise I think the difference will be some now lost organic material.
This would seem to settle the question of whether the mound was pre-existing. Parts of it at least seemingly were, going back to the 8 C BC. If graves came from different ‘layers/strata’, then that would imply that burials were an on-going process over centuries, with the mound growing as new layers were put down. Of course the evidence for the present tomb excavation and final layer ( if that be correct) being built by Deinocrates appears to be wishful thinking with scant or no evidence at present....Efstathios wrote:
I agree with Agesilaos here. There possibly was a smaller mound and Deinocrates included it in a larger one. Lazaridis dug from the top of mound Kasta and after he found the base of what is now believed to be the base of the lion he continued down to a depth of 13-14m and found archaic burials from the iron age. The height of the mound when Lazaridis began excavating was 21m, and at 14 m down he found the burials. Furthermore, he continued digging down until he reached the natural hill formation.
All this is somewhat fanciful , and rests on the unwarranted assumption that the ‘thousands of tonnes’ of fill were put there by human means, a herculean task given that access could only be by a few people at a time, with buckets. ( anyone care to make an estimate of how long and how many man-hours would be involved ?Taphoi wrote:
The biggest problem with the Alexander cenotaph/heroon theory is that it fails to explain why anyone (let alone Cassander in 316BC) put in two vertical sealing walls and one horizontal sealing floor plus thousands of tonnes of riverbed sand to prevent entry to an empty monument. It would be madness. The walls and the fill are signposting very clearly that there is something of "radioactive" potency sitting in there. It is hard to imagine given the tomb context that that could be anything but the bones of somebody with a politically threatening cult following.
)A good point, Taphoi ! The fill certainly didn’t shore up anything. The fact that no significant artifacts seem to have been found ( or at least none reported) means that the gargantuan task of filling it was probably not an 'anti robber' measure either, since it amounted to "locking the stable door after the horse had bolted."So if men would have been unlikely to have filled it up for some logical reason, then that strengthens the possibility that it occurred naturally. Any actual 'sealing' activities were probably restricted to the walls etc... There is no engineering sense whatsoever in 3/4 filling a tomb with sand to hold it up. The critical load was taken by the arched roof and that was totally unsupported by the sand. Nor would sand have offered any support to the walls. Sand flows just like water. Who would use sand to shore up a building? You would use cement and stone pillars. It is a complete engineering absurdity (I think invented by the PhDiva) that the sand fill was for shoring up the construction. Anyway, the sealing activities prevented access to the building, so there was no point in preserving it.
There is some layering, mostly seen on the caryatids (see here), which could indicate that sand came in partly due to natural processes. On the other hand, could this layering have occured due to liquefaction?A good point, Taphoi ! The fill certainly didn’t shore up anything. The fact that no significant artifacts seem to have been found ( or at least none reported) means that the gargantuan task of filling it was probably not an 'anti robber' measure either, since it amounted to "locking the stable door after the horse had bolted."So if men would have been unlikely to have filled it up for some logical reason, then that strengthens the possibility that it occurred naturally. Any actual 'sealing' activities were probably restricted to the walls etc
http://en.protothema.gr/amphipolis-cana ... -olympias/protothemanews.com, 5th Nov 2014 wrote:Amphipolis: Canadian archaeologist “bets” that the tomb belongs to Olympias
Terrence Clark states from Thessaloniki that “There are enough indications” – The size of the monument “indicates” an extremely important personality.
The curator of Western Civilizations in the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa Terrence Clark stresses from Thessaloniki that “If i had to place a bet, i would have guessed that the tomb belongs to the mother of Alexander the Great, Olympias. There are enough indications”.
On the occasion of today’s event at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki for the presentation of the North American tour of the exhibition “The Greeks: Agamemnon to Alexander the Great”, Mr. Clark said that from the excavation of the majestic tomb castes emerge exceptional sculptures and moving findings .
Finally the archeologist added that “The monument is in itself is very important no matter what part of the history will connect to eventually”.
Best regards,Pages 133-135
The human-headed lion - the 'sphinx' - is a creature well known to the arts of both Egypt and the near east. In Egypt is was commonly wingless but in the east it was usually winged. It has various functions, not least as a symbol of royal power in Egypt where it may be given a portrait head. A common iconographic group is of the sphinx trampling down a human foe; this appears also in the near east and may affect its role in Greece, where the trampling is taken for lifting a body. The creature had already appeared in Greek Bronze Age art. In the Levant it seems to represent a 'cherub' and is of either sex. It reappears in Greece at the end of the eighth century, derived from Syrian art, and its usual role is as one of a frieze of animals and monsters, with no obvious function or identity. It generated monsters such as the two we see on the Athenian Geometric cup, which are simply generically supernatural but with no particular function. A special type, common in Crete, is male and helmeted. However, it may be that the eastern scenes of it over-running a human figure gave rise to its use in Greece as a death demon, and as guardian of a tomb, functions which it could exercise from the late seventh century on, without disturbing its more secular and decorative role. However, the creature was soon to be called upon to play a name role also in heroic myth.
The land of Thebes was ravaged by a monster which carried off the young men; this is a familiar folk ale involving a locally threatening monster or demon. The carrying-off was a function which helped identify the Theban monster with human-headed winged lion, in its role in foreign art of trampling a man. The human head had a narrative value too since the creature uttered a riddle which, unanswered, guaranteed the death of those sent out from Thebes to confront it. This is another folktale element - the riddle to be solved to avoid death - which was grafted on to the episode. The hero Oidipous outwitted it, solved the riddle and killed the creature. We do not know how old the story is, but we can see that its elements are relatively commonplace, part of which may have originated in the discovery of monstrous and human remains. The attacking sphinx remains a subject for Greek art whether or not it is to be taken as the Theban, from gems, to sculpture - on the throne of Olympian Zeus.
Oidipus' adversary was called phix in its homeland Boeotia, where there is a mount Phikion, but elsewhere generally sphinx, both words being of uncertain derivation, sphingein means to bind tight, perhaps then 'grasping'. The Boeotian poet Hesiod was calling it Phix by about 700 BC and placing it in a family tree with other monsters of myth. Greek artists later decided that the human-headed winged lion, by then long familiar in their art, was a suitable model for it, and that it should be female (like its name); the name 'Sphinx' was accordingly applied, most representations of the sphinx in Greek art thereafter have nothing to do with the story but are decorative, or related to its funerary associations. The first use of the name in art (as theichs, poorly written, probably meant for phix) is on an Athenian vase of little before 550 BC, and on another rather later as sphichx, on both the creatures are simply decorative, but the name implies earlier assocation with the Theban story, which is shown, without the names, on uninscribed cups of the same date where the creature is seen pursuing youths; these must surely be the Thebans but with no suggestion of a riddle. Scenes with a probable Oidipous also appear before the end of the sixth century, and often later. Thus the creature's career in myth is established, without disturbing its other roles, funereal or decorative. From the early fifth century on sphinxes are occasionally given human breasts to accentuate their femininity, and the male sphinx was long forgotten except in the Persian east, where it may be regal as it was in Egypt. But the 'Riddle of the Sphinx' is Greek in origin, not Egyptian, however it may be popularly applied.
The fact that the Oidipous with the riddling monster was the same as the Oidipous of the tragic family life, killing his father, marrying his mother, blinding himself, with doomed children, is an interesting reflection on the vagaries of Greek myth. In dealing with the tragic Oidipous the poet Sophocles was obliged also to refer to the monster-slaying, which seems and is quite an alien episode. The functions and origins of the two stories were totally different, their coincidence in one figure a product of the locality.
