The Sphinxes Guarding the Lion Tomb Entrance at Amphipolis

[hiphys]

I don't remember where, but I found once in a book that Arsinoe (Ptolemy's mother) was Philip's cousin: obviously I cannot quote any ancient source.

[amyntoros]

Pity not to get excited about the excavation of the greatest tomb in Greece, which might yet prove to be at least partially intact

Didn't say I was not excited - said I wasn't going to get overly excited, i.e. I'm not trying to convince myself that either Alexander's mother or his wife are in that tomb and I'll wait for evidence rather than conjecture. I am excited about the tomb in general though (didn't think I'd have to put that into print, but there you go). I will be absolutely thrilled if the tomb is found to hold anyone on agesilaos' list and I think I share that with everyone else on Pothos. This is history and a fabulous find.

Best regards,

[agesilaos]

Have to second that; I know I am a bucket of cold water but one has to be realistic, the reconstruction of the Lion Of Amphipolis as a mausoleum by Roger, though I read it was Broneer his fellow excavator was based upon examples in Asia rather than being solely from dig evidence, so is not really relevant. we have a tomb lacking the flanking shields and pseudo marble doors of Vergina, but as has been pointed out all of this decoration and detail is too widespread and general to give any clue to the occupants, the point is that it is a BIG tomb. Roger and Broneer thought the Lion did not denote a powerful individual but the general spirit of Martial Valour and a cenotaph (empty tomb) this is clearly mistaken now that the mound has been opened and there are distinct tomb chambers (in their defence they probably did not associate the Lion with the mound five miles away! Quite reasonably).

You have gushed Argaead, Andrew, will you put your reputation on the line and see my Antigonid bid? If you choose to hedge, that would be fair enough (I don't see many other petasai in the ring )

[Taphoi]

I am very happy to state my position at this point on the occupant(s) of the Amphipolis Lion Tomb.

Firstly, I actually have to agree with agesilaos on a couple of points: 1) It is not at all impossible that the tomb is early Antigonid. However I think the possibility is relatively low at this point (not more than 10%), 2) It is absolutely correct that the tomb is very unlikely to be a cenotaph, especially a cenotaph to Alexander, because of the interior chambers and because any such cenotaph should be at Aegae or Pella and because Hammond (The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 86, 1991) made a very plausible suggestion that an empty mound found buried under the centre of the Great Tumulus at Aegae was a cenotaph for Alexander 3) I continue to agree with agesilaos that this tomb looks royal.

I also agree that it is too early to be at all certain who the occupant was, but I would suggest that there is already a great deal of evidence pertaining to the question: enough to start to rank the candidates.

Therefore I will say that I consider Olympias to be the leading contender at present with about a 30% chance (note that this means I still think that there is a 70% chance of it being somebody else!)

The main reasons are: 1) The sphinxes - it is hard to find a lot of sphinxes in the tombs of the period, so pending more popping up I consider it significant that two thrones of queens (probably) found in late 4th century BC tombs at Aegae were prominently decorated with sphinxes - it is enough to suspect that female sphinxes were considered symbolic of senior queens in Macedon at that time and Olympias and Roxane are much the best fits given the dating evidence; 2) I find it incredible that Cassander did not himself travel to Amphipolis with his troops in order to force the capitulation of Aristonous and I doubt that he would have left Olympias behind at that point in newly reconquered Macedonia - therefore there is a good chance that Olympias died at Amphipolis; 3) Numerous features of the tomb at Amphipolis are connected with Tombs II & III in the Great Tumulus and the royal palace at Aegae and Olympias and Roxane are the best candidates for creating this web of individually insignificant but collectively telling connections; 4) Posing the question of who the Macedonians would conceivably have spent this much money and effort upon commemorating, Olympias is really the most convincing answer at present (I know the histories say she was unpopular, but it is clear that she was only unpopular with Cassander's faction - he himself was sufficiently worried about her popularity as to take extreme measures to prevent her addressing the Assembly and her army with Aristonous stayed loyal to her cause long after she herself had surrendered - also her cause was seen as the cause of Alexander: it was he whom they honoured by building his mother a spectacular tomb).

No other candidate individually has more than a 10% chance at this point. Next in line would be Roxane and Aristonous at about 10% each. Both died at Amphipolis for sure and both were just barely important enough for something this big not to look preposterous. But Alexander IV is very unlikely, because the evidence makes him the occupant of Tomb III at Aegae at better than 90% probability. There is also a 50% chance that the tomb has more than one occupant. Most other candidates are individually less than 5% on current evidence.

However, my assessment will continue to evolve as more evidence emerges. Olympias could go down or up depending on the next clues unveiled.

Best wishes,

Andrew

[Taphoi]

Ptolemy was .... the illegitimate son of Philip

I didn't think anyone believed that anymore. From memory, Philip was about 13 when Ptolemy was conceived and possibly in Thebes.

There is no contrary evidence and plenty of evidence in favour. It is actually likely that a 14 year old prince of Macedon would already be fathering illegitimate children and it fits in between stints of Philip acting as a hostage. There is an enormous thread on the matter here: http://www.pothos.org/forum/viewtopic.p ... 747#p23251, so no need to say anything said there again, except that I prefer to go with evidence rather than opinions.

Best wishes,

Andrew

[agesilaos]

On the first point about the potential occupants; well done! And i do not mean that sarcastically, you have expressed your opinion well, though the percentages?...no, that's just how you express things...elsewhere i have issues with it, but here OK. As for the Ptolemy thing you supplied the link. You have thrown your sun hat into the ring, it really is only a game though, so let's have everyone try to jump off the fence no one is going to mock a wrong guess; even Taphoi/Andrew admits that it is a lottery, we cannot be like William Hill and issue odds but lets get a guess going in a fortnight things ought to have progressed far enough to cut out many options - even if you have an equivocal position, and who cannot, since there is no certainty on the available evidence, let us see what we think collectively; I am quite prepared to be proved wrong, because we are in the realms of probability rather than evidence, if you want to post an 'I cannot say ' vote then do (it is definitely the most sensible position, but imagine the joy of your guess being correct, dateable and citable this chance will not arrive again, you might get to be the first person to get it right; so extract those digits! One of us must fine the solution and live forever as the first best guesser

[gepd]

There is a video here from the earlier visit of the greek prime minister at the Amphipolis tomb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTpV5_vBd9c

It is interesting because in news you could hear mostly the statements from the PM, while here its mostly the bits where the lead of the excavation is speaking. The whole thing is in greek, so in case you can't follow, what I thought is interesting is how she insists (in 3 parts in this clip) that the structure can be associated with Dinokrates. In one point she mentions that the diameter of the tomb is 158.4 meters, exactly resembling a "Dinokratis scale", since, as she says, he also designed the walls of Alexandria which have a measure of 15840 meters (I assume she means perimeter here).

[Taphoi]

There is a video here from the earlier visit of the greek prime minister at the Amphipolis tomb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTpV5_vBd9c

It is interesting because in news you could hear mostly the statements from the PM, while here its mostly the bits where the lead of the excavation is speaking. The whole thing is in greek, so in case you can't follow, what I thought is interesting is how she insists (in 3 parts in this clip) that the structure can be associated with Dinokrates. In one point she mentions that the diameter of the tomb is 158.4 meters, exactly resembling a "Dinokratis scale", since, as she says, he also designed the walls of Alexandria which have a measure of 15840 meters (I assume she means perimeter here).

I think that it is likely that she just meant that the scale/size is exceptionally large for a Greek tomb. Obviously, Deinocrates' projects were famous for their magnitude. The original Alexandria was probably 600m x 800m, but that was very large for a new foundation in Alexander's time (although the later city grew to 2km x 5km). The wall I showed in photos above was in an ancient circuit with those dimensions. Much of it survived until the 1820s. At that time people thought it was part of the medieval circuit, but it is obvious that the wall I showed you is Hellenistic (that is not now controversial except that some would still like to argue that it is Roman).
Best wishes,
Andrew

[gepd]

She is actually very explicit in this video (starting at 2:16) when comparing the 158.4 meters of the tomb's diameter with the 15.84 km of Alexandria's perimeter. She even refers to the whole thing as "το μέτρο του Δεινοκράτη" ("Dinokrates scale" or "Dinokratis measure" - not sure what the best way to translate this is). What she does not say directly but I think she implies is that there are many other elements that resemble Dinokrates (or his school), including the period of the tombs construction, and since the context is consistent, then choice of 158.4 meters for the tomb's diameter may not be coincidental.

I am not sure what the original reference is for Alexandria's wall perimeter, but i have found this in several books or studies (they actually refer to 15.8 km, no more significant digits), e.g. here: http://www.cpas-egypt.com/pdf/Mohamed_A ... 0Egypt.pdf

[system1988]

There is a video here from the earlier visit of the greek prime minister at the Amphipolis tomb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTpV5_vBd9c

It is interesting because in news you could hear mostly the statements from the PM, while here its mostly the bits where the lead of the excavation is speaking. The whole thing is in greek, so in case you can't follow, what I thought is interesting is how she insists (in 3 parts in this clip) that the structure can be associated with Dinokrates. In one point she mentions that the diameter of the tomb is 158.4 meters, exactly resembling a "Dinokratis scale", since, as she says, he also designed the walls of Alexandria which have a measure of 15840 meters (I assume she means perimeter here).

This is a very very interesting ( unique) interview of the excavator Katerina Peristeri and should be translated word for word if possible.Thank you for posting this -it was the missing link.
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I think it is the tomb of an admiral- general ( and of his relatives too of course). After the campaign all of them became extremely wealthy.
Pauline

[Taphoi]

She is actually very explicit in this video (starting at 2:16) when comparing the 158.4 meters of the tomb's diameter with the 15.84 km of Alexandria's perimeter. She even refers to the whole thing as "το μέτρο του Δεινοκράτη" ("Dinokrates scale" or "Dinokratis measure" - not sure what the best way to translate this is). What she does not say directly but I think she implies is that there are many other elements that resemble Dinokrates (or his school), including the period of the tombs construction, and since the context is consistent, then choice of 158.4 meters for the tomb's diameter may not be coincidental.
I am not sure what the original reference is for Alexandria's wall perimeter, but i have found this in several books or studies (they actually refer to 15.8 km, no more significant digits), e.g. here: http://www.cpas-egypt.com/pdf/Mohamed_A ... 0Egypt.pdf

I can explain this I think. in Table 8.1 of my book on The Quest for the Tomb of Alexander the Great I give a list of all the known ancient sources on the size of ancient Alexandria. There are three that give the perimeter of her walls: Curtius at 80 stades, Pliny at 15 miles and Stephanus Byzantinus at 110 stades. All of these are significantly different to the 15.84km given by Katerina Peristeri. However, at the end of my Table I give the perimeter as calculated by Mahmoud Bey on the basis of excavations in 1865. Mahmoud gives the perimeter as 96 Alexandrian stades and he gives an Alexandrian stade as 165m, hence 15,840m. So that is where the lady got her measurement from. However, having read Mahmoud Bey's book, I can also tell you that he largely guessed the exact line of the walls in some areas, so it is quite dubious whether Katerina Peristeri's value is very accurate. Also it is doubtful whether that outer wall was part of Deinocrates' original plan. It is essentially the wall line of the city at its zenith around the time of Augustus. As I have mentioned the only fragment surviving now of early Ptolemaic wall is in the line of a much smaller circuit, near the middle of Mahmoud Bey's city and encompassing its central crossroads. As I have said, that is a better candidate for Deinocrates' handiwork (against this Curtius says that an 80 stades circumference was planned by Alexander: octaginta stadiorum muris ambitum destinat, but this probably came from Cleitarchus who lived in the city in the mid 3rd century BC, when the city probably did have an 80 stade circumference). On the whole I think this thing is likely to be a random coincidence additionally because Katerina Peristeri is comparing a diameter with a perimeter, which is a bit odd.
Best wishes,
Andrew

[gepd]

Thanks a lot. It did sound as an overinterpretation when I heard it, but I mostly wanted to point the certainty with which she, and most likely many members of her team, associate this structure to Dinocrates.

[agesilaos]

Just so that it goes on record; I agree with Andrew But only 95%, I think Kleitarchos was earlier writing his history about 295, but it is a much disputed point.

[Taphoi]

Why might Macedonian queens have associated themselves with sphinxes? One possible answer emerges from Greek mythology:

Laius was buried by Damasistratus, king of Plataea, and Creon, son of Menoeceus, succeeded to the kingdom. In his reign a heavy calamity befell Thebes. For Hera sent the Sphinx, whose mother was Echidna and her father Typhon; and she had the face of a woman, the breast and feet and tail of a lion, and the wings of a bird.

So the sphinx was the creature of Hera, Queen of the Gods and wife of Zeus. It is well known that the kings of Macedon traced their descent from Zeus via Heracles, that they put depictions of Zeus on their coinage and associated themselves with Zeus quite generally. They celebrated an important festival of Zeus at Dion. And the people of Eresus in Lesbos erected altars to Zeus Philippios (Tod, GHI no. 191.6) - possibly the divinisation of Philip II in the guise of Zeus. If the Macedonian king posed as Zeus therefore, it would hardly be surprising if his senior queen became associated with Hera, the mistress of the sphinx.

A sharper photo of the righthand sphinx from Amphipolis now shows clearly that it too had breasts: there is protrusion of the smooth stone in the area of its right breast up to the break.

Breast mutilation of the righthand sphinx at Amphipolis

amphipolis44.jpg (143.49 KiB) Viewed 5380 times

Best wishes,
Andrew

[amyntoros]

The sphinx is one of those beings whose parentage varies according to the ancient source and there's a Dionysos connection as well as one to Hera (plus several others) so, yes, the Macedonian adoption seems logical. However, there is also a strong funerary connection which is not limited to Macedon. If anyone is interested enough to follow this, check out this link to a chapter in Oedipus, Philosopher, by Jean-Joseph Goux. I'm not saying all his theories are correct (haven't investigated them in detail) but his research on the Greek sphinx is considerable.

Best Regards,