Four years before Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark was released, in 1977, the Greek archaeologist Manólis Andrónikos found the entrance to a tomb on the outskirts of the town of Vergina. This discovery became the most important in Greece since Schliemann’s finds at Mycenae. It was the royal mausoleum of King Philip II of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, to which other tombs were later joined, forming a royal necropolis remarkable for its magnificence. No wonder: according to historians, Alexander the Great wanted to honor the memory of his father who was murdered at Aigai in 336 BC. And, as his name indicated, he wanted to do it big.
When Andrónikos found the bones that included a skull with a damaged eye socket, the wound from which the Macedonian king died, he was moved, as he explains in an interview that can be read in the museum that houses the tombs: “I thought I had in my hands the remains of Philip II and I began to trembleâ€. It was not be for lowerly. The entire set of the necropolis can be visited in the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Vergina, in northern Greece, in the area of ​​Macedonia.
The Greek gods who stir on Mount Olympus because almost all their stuff has been taken to foreign museums, especially the British Museum in London and the Louvre in Paris, and they are now snickering under their mustaches, or curls. that adorn their stone heads. Vergina is, in this sense, a kind of revenge for the Greek people against centuries of colonization and plundering of cultural heritage, because everything that exists was discovered at the end of the 1970s and everything, everything, has remained there. It is one of the most recent great archaeological discoveries in history, and therefore most intact.
And what remains to be discovered. Experts estimate that the entire valley in which the remains were found must be full of similar monuments. Not surprisingly, this entire area was the heart of the ancient Hellenistic empire. Here are the remains of the royal palace and various temples of the ancient city of Aigai.
What the visitor can see today is probably the most spectacular part of the entire excavation, the interior of the burial mounds, which covered some 100 hectares. In total, there are three royal tombs on display, from the 4th century BC, which were fitted out in their day with everything necessary to make the last trip.
As if he were a modern Indiana Jones, the tourist who goes to the museum of the royal tombs is ecstatic before the showcases of the three royal crowns, in finely worked gold.
The three were each inside their respective funerary urns, embossed with royal and natural symbols, and also accompanied by personal belongings of their owners. The ark belonging to Philip II is presided over by the Macedonian sun, symbol of the king and which decorates the Macedonian flag, it is made of 24-carat gold and weighs 8 kilos.
According to the customs of the time, the deceased king was cremated on a huge pyre and his body was laid out for cremation on a funeral bed made of wood, with many miniature decorations of gold, crystal and ivory. His clothes and weapons, as well as everything he loved in earthly life, also went into the pyre. Thus, his mortal body was delivered to the flames and the deceased could cross into the world of the gods.
Once cremated, the king’s bones were washed with wine and deposited inside a chest. Inside this chest was also placed the golden crown that he wore in the funeral ceremony. The crown on the tomb of Philip II is very realistic, imitating the leaves and branches of the oak, the sacred tree dedicated to Zeus. It has a total of 313 leaves, 68 acorns and weighs more than 700 grams.
In the second tomb, in the antechamber, the remains of the king’s wife, the Thracian Meda, were found. In the golden chest were the bones of a woman wrapped in a purple cloth of royalty, and a gold diadem with such fine ornamental details, it is considered the most precious jewel of the ancient world that survives. The diadem reproduces a headdress of 112 flowers and 86 leaves, all in gold.
The third tomb, found very close to the others, is believed to have belonged to Alexander IV, the son of Alexander the Great, as they are the remains of a young man between the ages of 13 and 15. There, instead of an ark, was found a silver amphora with the bones, and surrounding the neck of the amphora was the third gold garland.
The royal tombs were found inside burial chambers built with large stones and with majestic marble portals, in the style of the interiors of the pyramids of the Egyptian civilization. Numerous friezes have been preserved with drawings relating to mythological scenes or the daily life of kings and their retinues, as well as hunting scenes.
Next to the remains, carefully placed inside the coffers along with the gold crowns and diadems, were all the things the deceased needed in their afterlife. Whole sets of crockery and cutlery for banquets, musical instruments to celebrate, jewelry, items for personal hygiene…
Among the pieces, the king’s set of weapons stands out, with a series of complete armors, with a helmet, sword, cuirass, shield and others, all decorated with precious metals.
The entire exhibition is very detailed and with very complete and contextualized explanations. Little to do with the museums of the 19th and early 20th centuries, where all the pieces were spat out together in an effort to show everything but which ended up becoming a hodgepodge without connection. Here, progress obliges, and there is a good museum story and the visitor leaves with the sensation of having learned a lot and of having formed part, for a little while, of history.
Philip was part of a long line of kings, he was the first monarch to unite all of Greece, as it was then. His son, Alexander the Great, took over when his father was assassinated at Aigai. He was only 20 years old, but he had already inherited an empire and his ambition to conquer the Persians. After years of fighting and expanding territory to the Danube and the Black Sea, he died at the age of 33. His death divided the Macedonian empire.
The archaeological, historical and artistic importance of the royal necropolis of Vergina led to the fact that this complex was declared a World Heritage Site in 1996.
