The Sphinxes Guarding the Lion Tomb Entrance at Amphipolis

[system1988]

Thanks, that is a new factor.

The inscriptions come from the doctorate thesis of M. Andronikos' research assistant Chrysoula S. Paliadeli. The title of her doctorate is "The tomb monuments of the great tumulus of Vergina." Thessaloniki 1984. These tomb steles are either reliefs or painted and some of both kinds bear inscriptions. They were found in 1976 by M. Andronikos who noticed that they were so damaged relevant to the monuments that were found in the archaic cemetary of Athens that was looted by the Persians before they were used as contruction material for the Themistoclean wall. He also hypothesized that the ones responisble for this destruction might have been the gaul mercenaries that Pyrros used during his campaign against Antigonos Gonatas. After his victory in 274/3 BC, Pyrros captured Aegae and stationed a gaul garisson there. The Gauls remained there for a year and destroyed the royal tombs. (Plutarch)

Out of all these inscriptions I selected a few on which the letter "O" has a dot in the middle. According to Paliadeli, that dot is the remnant that the compass carving tool created when the carving of the letter occured. The result being that the "O" resembles the letter "Θ".

Their dating was very hard and complex and Paliadeli came to the conclusion that the inscription of Filotas Erreveou dates back to the 1st quarter or 3rd BC.

The Theukritos Theifanous inscription dates back to 325 BC by Andronikos' estimate. The same goes for the Theodoros inscription.

Here is the link to all of the inscriptions, I have written translations below most of them.

http://s1246.photobucket.com/user/IamSy ... sort=3&o=5

If you are interested in how the dating process progressed I will come back to it on a later post.

Best

Pauline

[Taphoi]

Before we get carried away by enthusiasm for the dotty omicron, let's consider the facts.
System1988 has diligently scoured the entire corpus of 4th-3rd century BC Macedonian inscriptions and found a few isolated cases of dotty omicrons. Most of these are obviously unintentional remnants of damage (perhaps subsequently weathered to prominence) by the point of the compass used to draw the circle of the omicron, because they are paired in the same name with identical thetas and it cannot have been the intention of the inscriber to draw two different letters identically. Others look like accidental coincidences of roughness of the inscribed surface with the central area of the omicrons. As if that were not enough, System1988 notes that the dating of these particular inscriptions has been difficult, which means uncertain and possibly wrong. The correct conclusion from System1988's investigation is that it is virtually impossible to find deliberate dotty omicrons in the corpus of Macedonian inscriptions of the late 4th to early 3rd century BC. This is underlined by the fact that counter examples to the effect that the Macedonians DID NOT use dotty omicrons are legion. Below is a shield deposited at Dion by Demetrios Poliorketes in 294BC with a normal omicron. Also to my knowledge the entire corpus of inscriptions on Macedonian coinage of the era lacks any dotty omicrons (although I shall be interested if anyone knows of any exceptions, since I cannot claim to have examined every one of the millions of coins individually and amongst such large sample sets, exceptions are useful in proving the rule.)
More generally, what is happening at the moment has a wonderful analogue in the Kennedy assassination. It was uncomfortable for some Americans to believe that a single slightly deranged marksman could change American politics and American history so decisively in an instant, so they imagined fantasy plots and then discovered "evidence" to support them in the very large body of material gathered by multiple cameras and hundreds of witnesses. They saw shadows on the grassy knoll and took advantage of inconsistent reports of the number of shots to invent a second gunman and "proved" their hypothesis by noting that the Lee Harvey Oswald shots were fired from behind the president, but he jerked backwards when hit. But it was reflexive for the president to jerk backwards and the majority of the brain matter emerged in the forward direction from the large exit wound, so the physics sent his head backwards too. There is no real need for a second gunman and no real evidence for his/her existence.
So now in the case of the Amphipolis tomb we have bones buried in a cist grave which everyone agrees existed prior to the tomb above it. The obvious conclusion is that the tomb honours the bones in the cist grave just as it is obvious that Oswald shot Kennedy. But that conclusion is uncomfortable for the archaeologists, because it is at variance with statements they made to the media before and since the discovery of the grave. So they have looked through their large body of evidence to find a basis for an alternative motive for the monument and they found the dotty omicron inscriptions amongst a huge corpus of graffiti inscriptions and decided that they could draw a dubious and historically unlikely connection with Hephaistion. So Hephaistion is now their "second gunman" for whom the monument was built and their Lee Harvey Oswald (the grave) is relegated to having just happened to be in the way.
Hopefully, most of you will have resisted the temptation to believe in the second Kennedy gunman and you will exercise similar discretion in respect of the Amphipolis tomb. But if you do decide to believe in the Hephaistion hypothesis, please at least be aware that you are doing so basically in order to avoid discomfort to the archaeologists.
Best wishes,
Andrew

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[agesilaos]

You might like to take a look here, Taphers
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pxU ... on&f=false

Those pesky Greeks did, indeed use the same letter forms for different letters, theta and dotted omicron here, but there are instances of crossed thetas and omicrons and enclosed xi and eta (like a plus sign in a square), so your point is not sound and the explanation quite far-fetched; these are not damage but well-attested letter forms. Nor do I think System is claiming this proves that the monogram[s] spell ‘Hephaistionos’ only that the use of this form permits it. If this omikron was used, at that date it does not matter how common it was since nothing prevents its use in the grafitto.

I would say that you would be on firmer ground concerning the dating, as far as I can tell this for is used up to the fifth century and not into the fourth so it will be interesting to see why Andronikos dated them as he did.

There is also quite good evidence that the fatal shot in the Kennedy killing came from the security detail in the following car; not a coup but an accident. ‘Back and to the left’ a Corbynista mantra

[gepd]

Well, I would also comment that the circle that appears to contain the dot in the alleged "dotted omicron" is not really a full circle, so why should one interpret this feature as a "theta"? There are many unknowns in this letter collection ("monogram"), but at least for me the closest resemblance is to the name Hephaestion, even if there are few undecipherable features in there. Monograms or these type of symbols/signatures do not seem to contain a one-to-one letter correspondence to the name/person they refer to. You can see some examples in p. 70 of this thread, some more here: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numisw ... y=monogram

If you can also read this (Section 2.02) from here https://books.google.de/books?id=x2AD3M ... hy&f=false

you will see that dating an inscription based on a single letter form is not recommended, while dating from writing style of inscriptions alone is a very difficult task and cannot give a dating accurate better than 1 century (+/- 50 years). See Fig. 2 from here https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index ... /1537/1541

A good example is the type of "A" in the ΑΡΕΛΑΒΟΝ: in some books they suggest it only appears after the 1st century BC (I will put up the link when I find it again). The same books however suggest that the type of Omega we see on the alleged Hephaestion does not exist after 1st century BC, so one comes to many paradoxes comparing single letters.

But if you do decide to believe in the Hephaistion hypothesis, please at least be aware that you are doing so basically in order to avoid discomfort to the archaeologists.

I hope I am not doing that. I have at least tried to provide reasoning to some of my claims that do not exclude or support the Hephaestion hypothesis. Even without the inscriptions, a heroon for Hephaestion is still a possible scenario. There was one historian from Cyprus that made a relevant proposal a year ago or so. There is no scenario that has no problem. If there was one, one could have theoretically predicted the existence of this monument...

[Zebedee]

So now in the case of the Amphipolis tomb we have bones buried in a cist grave which everyone agrees existed prior to the tomb above it.

We need first to explain when the cist tomb was constructed, when the arch was added and the connection to the peribolos in the same period. Until that is clear, we cannot say anything.

So sayeth Lefantzis. We don't know whether the cist grave pre-dates or post-dates the stuff above it. Or even whether it was dug as part and parcel of the whole thing. Any agreement elsewhere is a bit pointless without some idea on how this all fits together. I personally think it will pre-date the stuff above, because we've examples elsewhere in Amphipolis for similar burials at cult sites which pre-date the Macedonian period. But important to note that thus far dating and sequence of events on this site remains rather hazy in a lot of places.

[gepd]

So now in the case of the Amphipolis tomb we have bones buried in a cist grave which everyone agrees existed prior to the tomb above it.

We need first to explain when the cist tomb was constructed, when the arch was added and the connection to the peribolos in the same period. Until that is clear, we cannot say anything.

So sayeth Lefantzis. We don't know whether the cist grave pre-dates or post-dates the stuff above it. Or even whether it was dug as part and parcel of the whole thing. Any agreement elsewhere is a bit pointless without some idea on how this all fits together. I personally think it will pre-date the stuff above, because we've examples elsewhere in Amphipolis for similar burials at cult sites which pre-date the Macedonian period. But important to note that thus far dating and sequence of events on this site remains rather hazy in a lot of places.

Maybe that answer from Lefantzis was misunderstood. At that point he was saying that he prefers not to explain if the frieze was for a later burial in the 3rd chamber before clarifying few things, including whether the the cist was pre- or post-dating the overall construction. Later on he states that the cist was pre-dating the overall monument. They have actually said that in their presentation 1 year ago. I think their main argument for that comes from modelling the static behaviour of the complex.

They found that if the cist was post-dating the construction, the whole thing would have collapsed from earthquakes, loads etc. Not sure how they explained that. I assume they mean that if the cist tomb was not there from the start, the shift of the ground and overlying layers from the various loads and earthquakes would have been such that a later addition of a cist tomb would have been catastrophic. That was their main argument last year, not sure if they have more now. A slide showing some results of that modelling is below (left is the case with the cist addition post-dating the construction).

[Zebedee]

Maybe that answer from Lefantzis was misunderstood. At that point he was saying that he prefers not to explain if the frieze was for a later burial in the 3rd chamber before clarifying few things, including whether the the cist was pre- or post-dating the overall construction. Later on he states that the cist was pre-dating the overall monument. They have actually said that in their presentation 1 year ago. I think their main argument for that comes from modelling the static behaviour of the complex.

They found that if the cist was post-dating the construction, the whole thing would have collapsed from earthquakes, loads etc. Not sure how they explained that. I assume they mean that if the cist tomb was not there from the start, the shift of the ground and overlying layers from the various loads and earthquakes would have been such that a later addition of a cist tomb would have been catastrophic. That was their main argument last year, not sure if they have more now. A slide showing some results of that modelling is below (left is the case with the cist addition post-dating the construction).

Thanks gepd. But the overall construction could well be a period of many centuries here. Something was on site prior to the full works, that much is obvious, but precisely what remains most murky. The chronology of the site, how it develops, is most intriguing.

[system1988]

The tumulus of Vergina and the steles found in 1976.

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"The great tumulus of Vergina after being excavated for the most part. A small part of the tumulus can be seen as still burried, near the pine trees. The excavation sections show the tumulu's initial size. The royal tombs have been restored with metal steles temporarily. To the left the long, red- roof building is the lab where the organic material is being preserved." Andronikos

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Still not excavated part of the tumulus.

"The tumulus has a diameter of 110 meters and an average height of more than 12 meters....it was obious that its construction required immesurable quantities of soil.... I suspected that only the rule of a hegemon could possibly cocnlude such a awe inspiring construction. In the middle of the tumulus and 4 meters below the surface, many parts of broken steles were found, some engraved, some reliefs." Andronikos

"Antigonos Gonatas managed to regain the Macedonian territory as well as the holy capital of the Macedonians in short time. He himself must have beared witness to the looted tombs of the Macedonian royalty. This personal experience may have led him to two actions: a) A purification ritual and restoration of the lotted tombs. b) Taking care to seal them as well his own future final resting place. To do this, by staying true to the original tumulus there would be only one way: To build a tumulus so large that any sacrileges would be prevented from looting it.
... I have the impossible hope that below the tumulus the Macedonian roylaty tombs exist. Nothing can be ruled out."

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More to come

[system1988]

Following the previous post

It is now known, what M. Andronikos found when he excavated the Vergina tumulus:

TOMB IV
The Heroon
TOMB I
TOMB II (King Philip II of Macedon)
TOMB III

I can't but repeat- maybe moved by my memory of my own conversations with Andronikos, the words he wrote when the golden larnaka was opened, containing the bones of Philip II (as far as Andronikos believes): These are the words he wrote concerning the moment after the opening of the larnaka: "We felt the need to go out into the light, to breathe fresh air. When I was out I made a distance between myself and the excavation workers, the visitors, the police officers, and I stood by myself for a moment so I could compose myself after witnessing this incredible view. Everything was pointing to us having found a royal tomb and If our dating was right as it also seemed, then.... I didn't want to give any thought to it. For the first time I felt a strong chill, something like an electric current rushing down my spine. If the date... and if those were indeed royal remains then... had I held Philip's bones? It was scary, impossible for my brain to withstand

... (For security purposes) The golden larnaka had to be transfered as fast as possible to Thessaloniki museum without anyone finding out ... with my car I transfered the larnaka to the museum. We were driving fast, me and the cooperator, without sayign a word. I said to him, if we are stopped by the traffic police for overspeeding then we would say that we were transfering a dead person, which was essentially the truth.

Philip II larnaka

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Philip II bones, some have become crimson red because of the cloth that covered them. All the bones had been washed.

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The the stele

47 steles were found in total in the soil of the tumulus. It is certain that they were found afar from their original positions, meaning that they were apart from other relative to them artifacts that would allow them to be dated with the help of exterior objects. Thus the only available dating method is the internal one that entails the analysis of the stele itself.

Thanks to our knowledge about the relief sculpting, the dating of the relief steles of the tumulus is doable. As far as the painted steles are concerned, dating them is not as simple for the following reasons: 1) Few are the painted steles we have as a reference point. The two big painted groups of steles we have from Dimitriada and Alexandria are more modern to the current ones. 2) Our knowledge is limited as far as the great painted culture of the early and late hellenistic era is concerned.....
The thesis was published in 1984.... 3) the bad state of the paintings creates difficulties for the complete recognision of their depictive themes. Nevertheless, the tomb reliefs are in general the closest depictive parallels of the painted depictions because they have the same deceased theme... the depictive similarities from the painted depictions compared to the relief presentations are of course additional chronological elements.

... thus the main focus for dating the stele monuments falls upon their own inscriptions
... however, the precise dating of an engraved monument based on the writing style of the letters has difficulties because the style is not a non-elastic and solid data that would allow dating in narrow chronological limits. Especially for the Vergina steles, that objective difficulty is even more intensifyed by the lack of a sufficient number of properly date macedonian inscriptions dating back to the early and late hellenistic era... we are forced to go back to dating of inscriptions of other regions.

We are aided by the relief inscribed steles that are inscribed. Their inscriptions can be dated rather accurately and become in turn reference points for the other inscribed monuments (painted steles)

... despite the fact the writing style doesn't allow us to differentiate with absolute certainty an inscritpion that dates back to the first quater of the 3rd BC from another that dates back to the second quarter of that same century, we estimate that none of the inscribed steles... does not descend chronologically as far as the mid of the 3rd BC. It is then appropriate to assume that in 274/3 BC terminus ante quem for the construction of the steles.

Verenno Filistou (notice the "F")

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To be continued

[Alexias]

I am unsure if anyone has mentioned this, but is it possible that, if these engravings do represent Hephaestion's name, they are some kind of official seal?

Arrian says of Alexander's letter to Cleomenes whom he had left to build Alexandria

The chapels were to be exceedingly large and to be built at lavish expense. The letter also directed that Cleomenes should take care that it should become the custom for them to be named after Hephaestion; and moreover that his name should be engraved on all the legal documents with which the merchants entered into bargains with each other.

If this did not apply just to Alexandria, but to other cities as well, is it possible that the engravings represent the contract between the stone mason and the builders of the shrine (or the stone quarriers and masons)? Thus they may not mean that the shrine was built for Hephaestion, just that there was a contract signed and sealed with Hephaestion as divine witness.

I can't help but think of the similarity between this kind of symbol (British Standards kitemark)

and this

PS does anyone know why Alexander's will would have ordered a temple to Artemis Tauropolus at Amphipolis? Something to do with bulls and the Athenians?

[agesilaos]

The ‘contracts’ which were to be enacted under Hephaistion’s name were bottomry loans, wherein one merchant advances money to another on the basis that it will be repaid with interest upon the safe arrival of the cargo but forfeit should it be lost. Surviving examples not only demonstrate that commerce continued all year round but the rates of interest charge reflected the dangers of the season. The Temple overseeing the oath (which all contracts were) would charge a fee and inscribe the deal, lesser ones perhaps being less permanently recorded on papyrus or similar. A tithe may also have been charged on the interest, in either case they were ways to give a temple an income.

Had the intention ever entered into practice, for which there is no evidence at all (unsurprising since the heroa it intended to support remained unbuilt), we would find the name at the head of inscribed contracts within the temple precincts, not upon the goods transported.

Artemis Tauropolos was the patron goddess of Amphipolis, the cult may have come with the Athenians who worshipped her at Brauron in Attika but they may have assimilated a local deity as Artemis is linked to Hekate the Goddess of crossroads, suitable for Ennea Hodoi, Nine-Ways. It may have been that Alexander was only intending to re-found the Temples listed at Diodoros XVIII 4 v, Dephi, Dion, etc already had temples.

[Zebedee]

One of the ideas around Artemis Tauropolos is that she became a cult goddess for the Macedonian army, and Amphipolis was also a major settlement for Macedonian veterans. So one gets a happy blend of circumstance, or something along those lines, to place the temple there.

[Alexias]

Thanks, agesilaos, it was just an idea.

I've posted this before elsewhere, but EM Forster, who wrote a History and Guide to Alexandria in 1922, was under the impression that at least one of the two shrines for Hephaestion was built in Alexandria on the island of Pharos, in the area of Ras-el-Tin, near to the prehistoric harbour. This could be apocryphal though as he also says that there are a lot of remains of tombs on the northern shore (he doesn't say if Egyptian or Graeco-Roman).

[system1988]

The steles of the great tumulus of Vergina

As I mentioned in the first post, and as an answer to what Agesialos mentioned (it would be interesting to know how these inscirptions with the dotted "o" were dated) I will once again make a reference to Paliadeli's text. First, I had sent Filota's inscription: That stele is painted and this multiplies the difficulties of the dating process, as mentioned before. Also, faced with that difficulty, Andronikos, as well as Paliadeli, were greatly helped by the quite precise dating of the relief steles- which due to them being of the same theme as the painted ones, and belonging to that same closed ensemble (meaning that they all were simultaneously burried with the tumulus)- a fact that helped them date painted ones. By comparing the form of the inscription, the form of the depiction as well as using other already dated Macedonean and non- Macedonian inscriptions of that same era.

So by applyting this method on Filota's inscrpition and his family's and by comparing it with others of Samothrace as well as with the little girl's depiction which is common on presentations that date back to the early hellenistic era, the Filotas dotted "o" inscription is dated back to the the first quarter of the 3rb BC.

We are not aware if The Theukritos Theifanous and Theodoros Theifanous inscriptions (with dotted "o") were painted or not. Thus, after an exhausting presentation of the inscriptions of both steles (since they are similar) Andronikos dated them around 325 BC.

With the above, I think I gave the dismention of the difficulties of those specific inscritions.

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Since we are still taking about the Vergina tumulus, I would like to add something to the conversation which I don't recall being mentioned at any point: The gigantic mass of soil that created the constructed tumulus was gathered to burry the group of the tombs which were discovreed concentrated at the south western quadrant of the tumulus: The location of the royal tombs was extremely off-center compared to the main mass of the gathered soil. (Maybe it was Gonatas' thinking that they shoud be off-centered so that any potential looters who would of course try the center of the tumulus to descent into the tombs would be discouraged not being able to find anything or in the end, assume that this was a naturally created mass of dirt).

In about 4 to 5 meters down, narrow and long constructions were found (the 2 photos), which according to Andronikos' opinion, were made in order for the mass of soil to be held at bay. It is very characteristic the fact that on top of the royal tombs there was no such stone construction. Such a huge and cared for stone construction is unique from what we know of in archaelogical data. The pile of stones that was uncovered in the great tumulus of Amfipolis belongs in the category of filling of a 4 sided stone construction at the center of the tumulus and was construed as a foundation for the burial sema (the lion of Amphipolis). An analogoous, but made of bricks, construction was found at the center of the Eretria tumulus....

Finally, I will conclude with with somethhing of a trivia. Here is a photo of the stele of Arpalos, brother of Pagasta, which dates back to the second half of 4th BC (a helping hand in the dating process of this one is meandros' form and the blossoms.) "If we take from the name Pagasta construe that this Pagasta was the well known courtesan of the Macedonean court, during Alexander's adolescence, then dating this stele to the third quarter of the 4th BC is a very possible scenario." Paliadeli

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[gepd]

Youtube videos posted earlier were removed - link to the full talk here: https://www.auth.gr/video/19293