Vergina is a small town in northern Greece located at the foot of a hill known as Monte Pieria. It was there that, in the 19th century, a team of French archaeologists found the ruins of Aegae, the first capital of the ancient and powerful kingdom of Macedonia, created by the Argean dynasty in 650 BC.
What surprised the French researchers most was a huge mound that exceeded 12 meters high and 110 meters in diameter. It was located in the old necropolis of the city. But it was not until a century later, specifically in 1977, when the area was excavated and it was confirmed that there were several exceptional tombs there.
Since then it had always been believed that Philip II of Macedon (382-336 BC), the father of Alexander the Great and the man who conquered classical Greece before his son conquered a vast empire, was buried at the site. The sumptuous architecture and exceptional decoration indicated this.
Some graves had been looted in the past, but others remained intact. Inside a marble sarcophagus, the cremated skeleton of a man was found, still wearing a gold crown decorated with oak leaves and acorns. In another there were the charred remains of a woman covered in purple cloth sewn with gold.
Now, a team of specialists from the Democritus University of Thrace has analyzed the bones found in the Royal Tombs of Vergina, dated to the 4th century BC to end the long debate about the identities of its occupants. Their conclusion is that all the human bone remains at the site were related to Alexander the Great.
As explained in an article published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, the evidence found “supports the conclusion that Tomb I belongs to King Philip II, his wife Cleopatra (Alexander’s stepmother) and their newborn son. Tomb II belongs to King Arrhideus (Alexander’s half-brother and successor) and his wife Adea Eurydice. Tomb III is that of Alexander IV (son of Alexander the Great and Roxana).”
Archaeologists used macrophotography, x-rays and anatomical dissection to determine that the male skeleton in Tomb I had a “knee fusion” that matches “historical evidence of King Philip’s lameness.” Additionally, some artifacts from Tomb II belonged to Alexander the Great himself.
The graves, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, “contained a surprisingly rich variety of funerary goods,” the study’s authors say. Although there was never any doubt that the buried bones belonged to close relatives of Alexander, scholars have spent almost half a century arguing over who exactly those people were.
The baby’s extremely young age – he was just a few days or weeks old when he died – coincides perfectly with the story of Philip’s murder in 336 BC. Most sources indicate that the king died at the hands of his bodyguard Pausanias a few days after the birth of his wife Cleopatra.
The regicide is believed to have been ordered by Olympias, Philip’s former wife and mother of the future Alexander the Great. Immediately afterwards, Olympias murdered Cleopatra and her baby, possibly burning them alive, clearing the way for Alexander to succeed the throne.
Researchers at the Democritus University of Thrace note that the “skeletal evidence of the neonate allows us to conclude that Tomb I belongs to Philip’s second wife and her newborn son, since Cleopatra’s offspring is the only known murdered neonate of any couple.” royal Macedonia”.
Previously, some scholars had argued that Philip II was buried in Tomb II, which also contains the remains of a man and a woman. However, the absence of a baby, combined with the lack of apparent signs of physical trauma to the male skeleton, has ruled out this possibility.
Instead, based on skeletal evidence of excessive horse riding, Greek archaeologists conclude that Tomb II belongs to Adea Eurydice, wife of Alexander’s half-brother King Philip III Arrhideus (359-317 BC), who suffered from an intellectual disability. .
“Thanks to ancient representations and descriptions, some experts have suggested that the armor found in Tomb II belonged to Alexander the Great, which is only possible if it is the tomb of Arrideus, not Philip II,” the authors write.
Hence they determine that these remains are those of “Alexander’s much less impressive brother” and his rather impressive “warrior wife.” “These conclusions refute the traditional speculation that Tomb II belongs to Philip II,” they conclude.
