The Sphinxes Guarding the Lion Tomb Entrance at Amphipolis

[gepd]

It would have been very difficult to replace the marble facing of the walls once the tomb was built. Not least because the blocks were clamped together. There are many other possible explanations of the varying form of the facing stonework from one chamber to another. They needed to accommodate different room sizes and different decorative schemes. If they were re-using stones cut to a variety of sizes for an abandoned monument to Hephaistion, they may have adapted the stonework in order to re-use it with minimal re-cutting of the stones. The chamber with the grave slot is deeper into the mound and subject to a greater loading from overlying soil. That could be sufficient to explain differences in the state of preservation.

Not sure why it should be difficult - they just have to break them (if they were not already broken by raids, looters etc.). They did manage to remove the peribolos blocks. As for the last chamber and the poor preservation quality, the heavy loads explain the collapsed parts, not the humidity damage, discolouration etc. Heavy loads from the soil should increase gradually as one goes deeper into the chamber system. If that was the sole reason for damages, damages would have also evolved gradually with depth, not start sharply in the 3rd chamber. Anyway, my point is that the huge difference in preservation quality between the 3rd chamber and the other two + the different wall strucures fit well to a story of repairs/remodelling of the first two chambers.

An interesting hypothesis, but there are other possibilities. The house might have been imitating a fourth century building in Amphipolis itself, which was in turn imitating the Kasta Mound. Your hypothesis is also undermined by the fact that the photos show that the stonework in the first chamber is not as regular as the archaeologists have shown in their diagram. For example, the vertical seams in one course do not occur precisely at the midpoint of the blocks in the adjoining course and the blocks in different courses appear to have different lengths (as well as different heights).

I prefer the simple explanation. They have found (and shown) 2nd century BC ceramics at the floor of the chambers + 2nd century BC coins within the fill. So the tomb was accessible in the 2nd century BC. In that case the owner of the 2nd century BC house would not refer to another house imitating Kastas. It would refer to Kastas directly.

The misagreement in the vertical seams drawings is secondary for this comparison - furthermore the sketch shows the east wall, the photo you uploaded the west wall. Maybe there are differences.

[Taphoi]

Not sure why it should be difficult - they just have to break them (if they were not already broken by raids, looters etc.). They did manage to remove the peribolos blocks.

I meant it would be difficult to move the blocks with an arch over the top holding the blocks down. You would have to deconstruct the chambers from the arch downwards to change the wall configuration. The blocks with drafted margins are late 4th century style and match the other interior and exterior blocks. I cannot see any need to imagine a 2nd century BC reconstruction. Why did they bother to reconstruct the walls so prettily and then fill the chambers with sand and smashed sculptures? Why did they reconstruct the chamber walls without repairing the sculptures? Who did all this in the 2nd century BC and why, since the tomb was empty apart from smashed up skeletons mixed up in the sand fill?

...the heavy loads explain the collapsed parts, not the humidity damage, discolouration etc....

You get rooms that have damp problems and rooms that don't next to one another in modern buildings. The chambers are nearly the same age, so major differences in dampness cannot be explained by slight differences in age.

They have found (and shown) 2nd century BC ceramics at the floor of the chambers + 2nd century BC coins within the fill. So the tomb was accessible in the 2nd century BC.

All the statements on coin and ceramic find locations seem to have been very vague. Do you have a diagram of where the coins and ceramics were found and some photos of the coins and ceramics themselves please? The only photos that I've seen are of the 4th century BC coins.
Best wishes,
Andrew

[gepd]

The blocks with drafted margins are late 4th century style and match the other interior and exterior blocks. I cannot see any need to imagine a 2nd century BC reconstruction.

I was probably not clear - sorry for that. I did not imply repairs occurred in the 2nd century BC - no idea when those happened. They may have taken place even few years after construction was finished, e.g. after the invasion of the Gauls.

Just saying that there is no good reason to have such a non-uniformity in the wall profile of the chambers for the original design, so the fact that we see a non-uniformity most likely (but not surely) implies a repair at some point. The different condition in the burial and other chambers may imply that the last one was closed and not maintained, while the others were in constant use (for rituals or whatever) and were kept in good condition and were maintained until they were filled. Lefantzis has said the frieze, the roof above the Persephone mosaic and the marble doors were later additions, did not say when that happened. I also recall he mentioned repairs in several instances, can't remember where he said that to quote him precisely.

The reference I made to the 2nd century BC is because of the comparison with the house, just to imply that this part of the tomb (first two chambers) were open, known and accessible.

Here are some 2nd century BC coins retrieved from the fill. They write "ΑΜΦΙΠΟΛΙΤΩΝ" (Amphipolitans) while the figures on the coins are goats.





Peristeri mentioned that most ceramics go up to 2nd century BC, some may be Roman (from looters?), very few of the 4th century BC. Coins go up to 2nd century BC. A small collection was found surrounding the sphinx head in the 3rd chamber. These were probably place there simultaneously as part of a ritual/offering, so that probably gives them good data to date this event. The ceramics going up to the 2nd century BC was also a conclusion of a committee that visited Amphipolis earlier this summer, something that was not disputed by the excavators.

Some undated ceramics (due to lack of colouring) were shown in the slides, the second is clearly at the floor of the chamber (around the caryatids base)




This was classified as roman, but doesn't say much since the roman period lasted several centuries...



Hope this helps.

[Taphoi]

Thanks for a very interesting an informative post, gepd. However, you surely realise that these details prove absolutely nothing on the dating of the sealing. I believe that this is not your fault, but because your source information, the presentations of the archaeologists, are similarly vague on all the key details.
The dates of the coins we need not question: I found basically the same information in my catalogues (image below).
But you do not tell us where exactly these coins were found and we know that other coins found were from before 316BC and we know that some coins found were from outside the sealing walls. Crucially, we do not know whether the small group of coins near the sphinx's head were the 4th century BC type or the 2nd century BC type, although the latest coin in that group undoubtedly provides an earliest date for the sealing.
It is also quite obvious that the archaeologists are presenting some material as being from the fill/soil, which is from outside the first sealing wall in front of the sphinxes, because they have said that the sealing happened in the early 2nd century BC and they could not possibly say that if they had found Roman pots in the fill inside the first sealing wall.
On the crockery, as you very fairly note, the ones in the slides are very difficult to date, due to lack of decoration, although at least one does indeed seem to have been found inside the first sealing wall.
As regards the datable 2nd century BC potsherds, it is still far from clear that any of these are from inside the sealing wall.
The overwhelming thrust of all this is that the archaeologists have been hyper-careful not to reveal any contextual information that will allow anyone else to second guess them on dating arguments. Conversely, until they reveal such information, we can have no confidence in their dating arguments.
Indeed we should be doubtful of their dating, because they themselves have publicly shifted their dating of the sealing all the way back from the third century AD to the second century BC. So what evidence we actually have is that their error margin is plus or minus half a millennium.
And the dating is just one part of the problem with their arguments: as we have seen they have edited other data (e.g. the ΑΡΕΛΑΒΟΝ inscriptions) in a way that prevents us from checking key details. It is hard to accept this is accidental when there is such a consistent pattern (e.g. both the ΑΡΕΛΑΒΟΝ block photos were edited in precisely the same way - a way that would precisely stop us seeing that the initial Π had been lost when the blocks were trimmed down in size for re-use).
Best wishes,
Andrew

KastaCoins.jpg (73.04 KiB) Viewed 3311 times

[agesilaos]

Whoa, there! It is by no means certain that the graffiti blocks have been recut, that is speculation on your part, Taphers, it is certainly unsafe to extrapolate from that speculation that the photos have been cropped in order to deceive. It is possible but I see more wishful thinking and plain incompetence than deliberate deception. You yourself have committed a solepcism of your own above; ‘we know that other coins found were from before 316BC’, this is wrong; we know that the earliest coins could not have been minted before 316/5 when Kassandros became a minting authority upon the demise of Olympias. Now, I interpret this as a slip on your part and nothing more sinister. I think we can extend a similar courtesy to the archaeological team whilst agreeing wholeheartedly that the vague presentation of the material is the worst advert for the honesty of the presentation. It has to be borne in mind that Greece is another country, they do things differently there; the toxic rivalries have already emerged and I am guessing we are collateral damage in the team’s attempts to keep their ‘colleagues’ in the dark until they are ready to be definitive, factor in the political pressure and the ‘pothos’ to find an Alexander connection and most is explained. Let us correct the blatant historical errors but not get MacArthy on their posteriors.

Your own Olympias theory has just as many, and broadly similar, holes as their Hephaistion/Ant Monopthalmos one, and you have presented some, to my mind, pretty fanciful scenarios in support, yet I doubt you are the nexus of a malign conspiracy.

Mention has been made of the drafting on the blocks being a fourth century feature, but it was hardly universal nor, I think, exclusive; none of the attested late fourth century tombs at Vergina have this feature, for instance. Until the context of the finds is revealed we cannot fairly judge any hypothesis beyond its relation to the textual evidence of the historical situation.

[Taphoi]

Whoa, there! It is by no means certain that the graffiti blocks have been recut, that is speculation on your part, Taphers, it is certainly unsafe to extrapolate from that speculation that the photos have been cropped in order to deceive. It is possible but I see more wishful thinking and plain incompetence than deliberate deception. You yourself have committed a solepcism of your own above; ‘we know that other coins found were from before 316BC’, this is wrong; we know that the earliest coins could not have been minted before 316/5 when Kassandros became a minting authority upon the demise of Olympias. Now, I interpret this as a slip on your part and nothing more sinister...

Regarding the coin dates, whereas I agree that the minting dates do not give us the latest dates that the coins might have been placed around the sphinx head, I was arguing the question of the earliest date, for which I think the minting dates are appropriate.
Regarding the "incompetence" of the Greek archaeologists, I regard them as highly competent in their field, but I agree with you that it is a matter of mere opinion at this point as to whether they are leaving out key bits of information from their evidence out of "incompetence" or cleverness. I lean towards the cleverness end and you seem to lean towards incompetence, which is fair enough. Time will hopefully tell...?

Your own Olympias theory has just as many, and broadly similar, holes as their Hephaistion/Ant Monopthalmos one, and you have presented some, to my mind, pretty fanciful scenarios in support, yet I doubt you are the nexus of a malign conspiracy.

Olympias has the skeleton of a sixty or more year old lady on its side and a red-headed queen being carried off into the underworld by people bearing a remarkable resemblance to Philp II and the young Alexander. And there seems to be a measure of agreement now that the Caryatids are priestesses of Dionysus (called Klodones in Macedon). And sphinxes are found on the thrones of two 4th century BC Macedonian queens. And the Hephaistion theory will assuredly fall, if it turns out that the pis have been taken (so to speak ) And history suggests that Olympias would have been buried uncremated since she died in disgrace. There is now no possible refuge in making the skeletons Roman to explain the lack of cremation, so there is no historical explanation except that the individuals died in disgrace.
The only thing in my hypothesis that is not precisely in the histories is the idea that Cassander attempted a reconciliation with the Royal Family in the period 316BC-310BC, which allowed the Royal Family, who were based at Amphipolis, to build a fitting monument to the king's grandmother. But even on this matter, Cassander's marriage into the Royal Family in 315BC is indicative of a reconciliation.

Mention has been made of the drafting on the blocks being a fourth century feature, but it was hardly universal nor, I think, exclusive; none of the attested late fourth century tombs at Vergina have this feature, for instance. Until the context of the finds is revealed we cannot fairly judge any hypothesis beyond its relation to the textual evidence of the historical situation.

It is established fact (and it is in various textbooks on ancient architecture: e.g. Robert Scranton, Greek Walls, 1941, pp. 131-133 and 180, who calls these blocks, "Tooled Face, Bevelled Edge") that the use of ashlars (blocks) with drafted margins became very common in major monuments in the last quarter of the 4th century BC and persisted into the first quarter of the 3rd century BC. Nevertheless I agree with you that the feature is not absolutely exclusive to that period.
Best wishes,
Andrew

[agesilaos]

The earliest date for Kassander’s coinage is 316 (I prefer 315 as that is where both the Parian marble and Diodoros put Olympias’ death, see the chronology thread and arguments there against). In 319 he was biding his time, in 318 he was a refugee at Antigonos’ court until he was resourced for an attack on Polyperchon, which centred around Athens until Plod’s humiliation at Megalopolis in spring 317 (others would say autumn 318), but even then there was no concerted move on Macedon until news of the dual regicides and the massacre of his supporters probably as late as December 317, certainly after October of that year. Diodoros is quite clear that he did not gain control of Macedonia, a prerequisite for minting coinage, until Olympias had been forced to surrender and then been executed. At the earliest estimate this was spring 316, though, as stated, I think the evidence points more strongly to 315. There is no possibility of his minting prior to this. QED, no earlier coins have been reported.

Agreed; whether one considers the errors of the team as deliberate and part of a conspiracy, or simply careless and driven by preconception is a choice one has to make for oneself. As you say I incline towards the latter; I cannot consider as ‘clever’ such errors that we can see through so easily and, as I said above, the rivalries within Greek Archaeology also play a major role.

There were many more sixty year olds than Olympias and there are two men in their thirties and a baby to explain too; we will have to await the C14 dating (if it is being done). History suggests strongly that Kassandros would not bury his arch enemy in the largest tomb ever constructed in Greece but the written sources may not give a full picture; for me you are stretching hypothesis beyond fancy, but that is only my opinion, of course. Kassandros’ marriage of Thessalonike was not reconciliation; it was contemporary to the restoration of Thebes, the honourable interment of Olympias’ victims and the foundation of Kassandreia, in short the reversal of Alexandrian policy and a return to the Philippic. Alexander’s issue, wife and mother were eradicated and one of his major statements (the destruction of Thebes) overturned. This played well in Macedonia where Antigonid propaganda made no headway.

A range of 325-275 seems narrow at both ends; the evidence is hard to pin down , dating monuments may not be precise and much of the cladding has been robbed out and reused out of a dateable context (for the original building).

Nothing so far would seem to exclude a building date of between 316 (if the Kassanders are foundation deposits) and 250. Nothing is conclusive so far. In favour of a later dating I find the lack of any historical reference significant, were Kassandros responsible his enemies would surely have made playoff his royal aspirations as they did over the founding of Kassandreia, etc. Similarly Demetrios Poliorketes could hardly have constructed it and have it escape Plutarch’s notice in his list of that monarch’s excesses, those being one of his themes for the life. Thereafter darkness descends, for us.

The strongest evidence for an earlier dating are the Kassanders, but sans context their value cannot be judged. The sculptural style seems to favour a post 300 date, with the layered sole and the toe indentation. The seeming replication of the wall style within a 2nd century BC house also tends toward a later dating; the house in question was of a richman it is more likely that the design was new and commissioned, than aping a neighbour, perhaps it was the house of a commissioner for the monument; any cultic priests would have lived on the hill itself. Naturally, we also have to consider the evidence for the dating of the house!

I will have to find Scranton’s book trying to find anything by searching even ‘pseudo-isodomic walls’ is pretty much a waste of time. A 1940 vintage must give pause, however. As Marlowe, I think, had it ‘We are all at the mercie of Princes and Desperate men’, for Princes read archaeologists.

[Taphoi]

There were many more sixty year olds than Olympias and there are two men in their thirties and a baby to explain too; we will have to await the C14 dating (if it is being done). History suggests strongly that Kassandros would not bury his arch enemy in the largest tomb ever constructed in Greece but the written sources may not give a full picture; for me you are stretching hypothesis beyond fancy, but that is only my opinion, of course. Kassandros’ marriage of Thessalonike was not reconciliation; it was contemporary to the restoration of Thebes, the honourable interment of Olympias’ victims and the foundation of Kassandreia, in short the reversal of Alexandrian policy and a return to the Philippic. Alexander’s issue, wife and mother were eradicated and one of his major statements (the destruction of Thebes) overturned. This played well in Macedonia where Antigonid propaganda made no headway.

There are no other sixty year old women for whom anyone in the last quarter of the 4th century BC would conceivably have built the largest tomb in Greece. I am happy to agree with you that Cassander would not and did not bury Olympias. It was not his responsibility to do so. I am only suggesting that he allowed her family to bury her in 316BC and then to commemorate the grave with the Kasta Mound during 315BC-310BC. Cassander did not overturn the succession of the Royal Family to the throne until 310BC (when Alexander IV was about to come of age). In the meantime he subscribed to the idea that Alexander IV was going to become king in practice as well as in principle, so he could hardly stop the boy from building a monument to his grandmother. If he had, he would effectively have overturned the succession before he actually did in 310BC. The men's skeletons were 35-40 and 40-45 and the former definitely died by sword wounds. The latter could easily be Aristonous, Olympias's army commander, who was murdered at the same time as she at Amphipolis. Olympias also had a commander in Pella called Monimus, who had just surrendered to Cassander, but I doubt whether that would have stopped Cassander having him killed at the end of the war, since Aristonous surrendered and was killed anyway. So actually the three skeletons fit the account of Diodorus perfectly.
Best wishes,
Andrew

[agesilaos]

'Perfectly' is rather optimistic; Monimos is not stated to have been killed at all, and having surrendered on his own recognisance and having no following is unlikely to have been, nor would the sources pass over another example of Kassandros' misdeeds. Aristonous had ambitions and it took a letter from Olympias to gain his surrender. It made sense to eliminate him. There would be no sense in burying him with Olympias, or rather, re-burying, the monument could not begin building in this scenario before Olympias' death, Aristonous pre-deceased her but would take months if not years before the tomb was ready to accept a corpse. If one dismisses the epigraphic evidence of Olympias' burial at Pydna, places her at Amphipolis where the evidence of Diodoros; Aristonous sent a letter, no report of Kassandros leaving Pydna; would indicate that she never left the site of her capture, and then that she was buried in a cist grave on Kastas, despite being left unburied in Diodoros and then having a massive monument built around her by a powerless boy stripped of all his trappings of royalty and his barbarian mother, you then have to have a disobiedient servant disinterred and re-buried alongside her and presumably honoured with cultic rites too. Hear that? It's credulity stretching

We cannot even be certain of the date of any skeleton why trust the early dating for the sealing with sand? If the coins of the Koinon were found in the tomb along with Roman pottery then it is patently wrong, we are left making bricks with little hay and no clay.

[agesilaos]

Interesting interview with Corso; a good example of the rivalries within the Greek archaeological community and the pitfalls of a closed hypothesis, there are several leaps of faith here

http://amfipoli-news.com/en/blogpost.php?id=1253

[gepd]

While I obviously recognize all the issues with the Hephaestion interpretation, I think the problems with the Olympias theory are even greater. And they don't reside only on issues with the historical sources, or the epigraphic evidence at Pydna, which, as Andrew claims (if I understood well), may only refer to another Olympias. The are specific findings for the Amphipolis area the Kastas monument that need to be explained. First recall the drawing below but focus on the cist grave:



There is a separator block in the tomb. That was used to separate the place for a kline and the place for an urn. So we are talking about a burial place for two people with one that was cremated. That makes no sense in the scenario of a fast and cheap burial allowed for Olympias after her potential death in Amphipolis. Who could have been the 2nd person that was worthy of a cremation and placement next to Olympias? All other relatives of Olympias that may have been worth a cremation were buried elsewhere.

Second is this table of most common names from Amphipolis (hope you can read some greek):



Nowhere in this list one finds Olympias or a variant. Same for Hephaestion. For Hephaestion there may be an explanation, if the monument was really intended for him. Soon after Alexander's death the monument changed purpose/use, so nobody remembered Hephaestion in Amphipolis and nobody was naming his/her kids as him, "inspired" by the monumental tomb. But for Olympias that explanation cannot work. Because according to what Andrew assumes, the bones of the 60 yr old lady in the burial chamber belong to her. So, Olympias remained buried in this grand monument dedicated to her from the 4th century BC until the sealing, which was the earliest sometime in the 2nd century BC. And sealing was very sophisticated, Amphipolitans really wanted to protect whoever or whatever was in there. If that was Olympias, she must have been a very important person for the city, worshipped for over 150 years! And nobody would even bother to name a person after her?

Third is that while they found the female skeleton to be the most complete one, Peristeri clarified that from stromatography, the only significant aspect of the skeletal finds is that it is one of the two 30yr olds that was found deeper and closer to the cist enclosure.

Fourth, there is still no indication that the five skeletons (plus animal bones - lets not forget those) are the original burials. That made only sense if the tomb was sealed soon after its construction, but since 2nd century BC coins were found in the fill (and they were specific that coins come from inside the chambers, not outside), that is not possible.

On a side note and regarding the female elements in the tomb (e.g. Carayatids) that definitely do not point necessarily to a female burial. There was a city very close to Amphipolis, named Tragilos, destroyed around 300 BC (so most find in there are definately 4th century BC). What Koukouli-Chrysanthaki (director of the local archaeological department before Peristeri) found there was a monumental structure that under its floor was hiding two sarcophagii, likely for male burials (not sure if skeletons were found). One is pictured below:



Female subjects together with weapons in decoration of Thracian/Macedonian tombs were not uncommon, at least for that region.

By the way you may also note the large hand for the two female figures in the sarcophagus, similar to the rather large and not so nice looking hand of Persephone of the Kasta mosaic... Maybe another local feature?

[gepd]

Olympias also had a commander in Pella called Monimus, who had just surrendered to Cassander, but I doubt whether that would have stopped Cassander having him killed at the end of the war, since Aristonous surrendered and was killed anyway. So actually the three skeletons fit the account of Diodorus perfectly.

Let me also note that this would also not work at least in the context of Andrew's theory. If I understand the theory well, Olympias was offered a cheap cist burial. Apart from the fact that the cist tomb fits only one full skeleton (plus the urn - but that is another problem) there was no place to fit Monimus, Aristonus or any of the other bodies and/or animals. So, if the whole Kastas monument was done to "decorate" the original simple burial of Olympias, one also has to assume that Monimus, Aristonus and some others were exhumed and reburied at Kastas, after that was completed. Why would anyone care?

[Taphoi]

Hi gepd,
My position on Olympias at Pydna is not as you have stated. My position is that there is no evidence that Olympias was buried at Pydna. Edson reconstructed the fragmentary inscription to make it look as though Olympias was buried at Pydna, because he incorrectly believed that Diodorus states that Olympias died at Pydna. Edson stated this in his paper, but unfortunately in a footnote, so nobody reads it. Without that assumption the inscription just says "tomb Olympia.." which says nothing whatsoever about a tomb of Olympias, the mother of Alexander, being specifically located at Pydna.
I do not agree that the second space within the cist tomb is necessarily for an urn containing a cremation. It might be for an urn not containing a cremation or for other grave goods. The amount of cremated bone found in the cist is not really consistent with a complete cremation burial in the cist. I think it is more likely mixed in from the surrounding soil, which was a pre-existing graveyard.
I do not make the simple equation of female decoration being for a female occupant. I draw specific connections between the females in the decoration and a powerful queen of Macedon and Olympias in particular.
Best wishes,
Andrew

[gepd]

Hi Andrew,

my references to your theory within few sentences is not sufficient. I was only meaning that a result from your overall argumentation is that the Olympias in the inscription refers to another person and not Alexander's mother. Nevertheless, I believe the fact that we have 5 person plus animal bones, in addition to the fact that there is clear evidence for looting, destruction and multiple uses of the tomb, is enough to suggest that burials found in there are not necessarily the original ones. The cist tomb was originally standalone, it fits one, maximum two if you believe the urn theory. And there is no way to prove that the 60 yr old lady was the person originally buried in the cist tomb. If one believes Peristeri in her statemens, it is actually likely that she was not the one buried there.

I do not argue that the cremated bone belongs to an original burial, but even if it did, it is not difficult to explain why only few bones of that cremated body were found. If these cremated bones were in an urn or a larnax, it is just easier for looters to just grab it and leave the site without spreading bones around. It would have been dark anyway in there, if they wanted to empty the urn's contents and look for treasures, they would have done it outside the tomb.

[Taphoi]

Hi gepd,
The deaths of Olympias and Aristonous were virtually simultaneous and we can infer that Monimus would have been killed at the same time. She was left unburied for some days and it is unlikely that the corpses of her commanders were treated any better, but her family must have been petitioning for the right to bury her. It seems that they were eventually successful and it is likely that everyone would have seen it as fitting for her generals to be buried over her grave. I do not think that they would necessarily have rated anything more than a coffin, if even she was only afforded a poor cist tomb at that time.

Whereas re-use of a cist is possible, it should not be the starting assumption and in this case we can virtually eliminate the possibility. We know that the tomb was sealed before the Macedonian kings lost power and it is extremely unlikely that they would have allowed the original occupant of this tomb, somebody hugely important, to be displaced whilst they ruled. Secondly, somebody thought it worth spending a huge amount of money sealing the tomb and the only thing left in the tomb worth protecting or perhaps making inaccessible were those bones - therefore the bones we have include the original hugely important occupant with a high degree of confidence. Finally on the best evidence it seems to be agreed that the cist grave pre-dates the monument erected over it: it should be later if it is a subsequent intrusion.

The Greek Ministry of Culture believed it worth emphasising in a written statement that the bones of the woman were concentrated in the bottom 1m of the grave and they did so on the basis of the detailed bone analysis. On what basis could Katerina Peristeri refute that statement? The attributions of the bones to the various skeletons were only made in that report and Peristeri can hardly use the report to refute the report.

So my question to you is this: if it turns out that the Πs have been cut off the ΠΑΡΕΛΑΒΟΝ inscriptions (i.e. there is not enough room left on the blocks to fit them in) will you agree that this points to the blocks having been re-cut to fit the Kasta Mound, so that the monument to Hephaistion for which they were quarried was never built and the Kasta Mound was never a monument to Hephaistion? If so, do you not have to conclude that the Kasta Mound was a tomb for somebody hugely important who died a few years after Alexander? Why would you not expect that person to be one of the skeletons actually found in the grave that the Kasta Mound clearly honours? Who else could this possibly be but Olympias?
Best wishes,
Andrew