Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Tomb of Alexander the Great (Encore)

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

By the age of 32, Alexander the Great had conquered most of the world, which was known to him.  This episode is not about any of that. This is about what happened after his death.  After he died, his corpse became a political football, and his tomb became the centerpiece of the city in Egypt that bared his name. Within a century, it became the largest city on Earth.  …and then at some point, his body and his tomb just disappeared from history.  Learn more about the corpse and the tomb of Alexander the Great and what might have happened to it, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors BetterHelp Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month ButcherBox Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free steak for a year and get $20 off."  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. By the age of 32, Alexander the Great had conquered most of the world which was known to him. But this episode isn't about that. This is about what happened after his death. After he died, his corpse became a political football, and his tomb became the centerpiece of the city in Egypt which bears his name. And within a century became the largest city on earth. And then at some point, his body and tomb just sort of disappeared from history. Learn more about the corpse and tomb of Alexander the Great,

and what might have happened to it on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Alexander III, Basilius of Macedon,

Hegemon of the Hellenic League, Stratios autocrater of Greece, Shah and Shah of Persia, Pharaoh of Egypt, and Lord of Asia, died in Babylon and modern-day Iraq at the age of 32 on June 11, 323 BC. How he died has been a subject of debate for well over 2,000 years. The written record, which was written well after his lifetime, says he suffered from chills, sweats, exhaustion, delirium, and he had terrible abdominal pains. The cause of death over the years has been speculated to be malaria, typhoid fever, alcohol poisoning, strychnine poisoning, and arsenic poisoning.

He might have died from some naturally acquired disease, or he might have been assassinated. However, he died, it really doesn't matter for the purpose of this episode. The point is, he died. When he died, nobody was ready for it. He was 32 and in the prime of his life. Moreover, he didn't have any plan for secession. He had an older half-brother named Philip III, who had some support, but by all accounts, he kind of had a learning disability and wasn't considered for.

fit to run the sprawling empire that Alexander left behind. Alexander had a wife named Roxanna, who was from Bactria in Central Asia and was pregnant at the time of his death. No one knew what the sex of the child would be, so they couldn't determine any secession plans at the time of his death. Also, because she wasn't Macedonian, that didn't lend support to her or her child's cause. A few months after Alexander's death, Roxanne had a son by the name of Alexander IV. However, it would be years before the baby Alexander would ever be in a position to rule. Moreover, Alexander didn't leave anything which suggested what should be done with the empire after his death. According to legend, when asked who the empire should go to on his deathbed, he might have said, quote, to the strongest.

But there's no way to know if that's true. However, it really doesn't matter if it was true, because for all practical purposes, that was exactly how it played out. The body of Alexander was embalmed, but the record isn't quite sure how. One theory is that the body might have been encased in honey. Another theory is that Egyptian embalmers were the body. there who worked to preserve the body. Whatever was done, it worked, as I'll get to in a bit. The body was placed in a gold sarcophagus, which was hammered to fit his shape. One request that Alexander did make is that he wanted to be buried at Siwa in Egypt. Sewa was an oasis in the desert, which was the location of the famed oracle of Amun Ra that Alexander visited after his conquest. After his visit, he believed himself to be the son of the god

Zeus Amun, which is sort of a hybrid of the Greek god Zeus and the Egyptian god. Amun. Traditionally, Macedonian kings were interred at the family burial site in Igui, which is where his father Philip II was buried. For a couple of years, the high-ranking generals in Alexander's army fought amongst themselves over who would control the empire or how it would be divided between them. After two years, in the year 321 BC, the body of Alexander was sent to Macedonia so it could be laid to rest next to his father in Igui. However, it never got there. While the procession was passing through Syria, who was intercepted by one of Alexander's generals Ptolemy. The empire was being split up amongst Alexander's Macedonian generals into four different kingdoms,

and Ptolemy was going to take Egypt. Taking possession of the body was actually a pretty big power move on Ptolemy's part for two reasons. The first is that Egyptians were pretty big on pharaoh worship and building grandiose tombs for their dead pharaohs. Alexander was, by right of conquest, the Pharaoh of Egypt, and the Egyptian people and nobility surprisingly didn't seem to have any problem with a foreign ruler. Ptolemy wanted to make sure that he was accepted as Pharaoh and the rightful heir to Alexander, so having Alexander's body and building his tomb was a really big deal. Second, the Macedonians also had a big emphasis on royal legitimacy coming through burying your predecessor. So, Ptolemy took Alexander and his gold sarcophagus back to the city of Memphis,

which was Alexander's center of operation in Egypt. Alexandria was still being built at this time, which is why it wasn't taken there first. Once in Egypt, Ptolemy established the Ptolemaic dynasty, which was the last dynasty of pharaohs in Egypt. The most notable person that you probably might recognize from this dynasty is their last ruler, Queen Cleopatra. Cleopatra is actually a Macedonian name, not an Egyptian one, and I'll be talking about her more in future episodes. The body of Alexander was eventually moved to the city of Alexandria by the son of Ptolemy,

Ptolemy II, Philadelphia. At first we know that Alexander was moved to a communal mausoleum in Alexandria, and then at some point a special mausoleum was built just for Alexander. It is probable that Alexander's tomb was already under construction under Ptolemy I first, and it just wasn't completed until the reign of Ptolemy the Second. This building became the center of the cult of Alexander, and by extension, the entire Ptolemaic dynasty. I did a previous episode on the city of Alexandria, and if you were an ancient visitor, there were quite a few things you would want to see in Alexandria, such as the lighthouse and the library. However, it was the tomb of Alexander which really gave the city its meaning. It would be the equivalent of how a cathedral was the cultural epicenter

of a medieval town in Europe. There are quite a few references in antiquity to the tomb of Alexander by multiple sources. So it's one of the ancient structures we have high confidence actually existed. At some point around the year 80 or 90 BC, the gold sarcophagus where Alexander lay was melted down for coins and replaced with a glass sarcophagus. If that sounds like a downgrade, that wasn't necessarily the case. A glass object of that size would have been extremely rare during that period of time, and might have been valued as much as the gold was. However, you can't make coins out of glass. We know that in the year 48 BC, Julius Caesar visited the tomb of Alexander when he was in Alexandria. According to legend, he wept in front of a statue of

Alexander when he was 32 years old because he hadn't accomplished anything of significance at the age when Alexander died. After the defeat of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra, Augustus visited Alexander and put flowers on his tomb and a golden diadem on his head. And supposedly he broke off part of Alexander's nose when he tried doing that. A series of Roman emperors were recorded as having visiting the tomb, including Caligula, who took his breastplate, Septimius Severus, who closed the tomb, and Caracalla, who supposedly took Alexander's tunic, ring, and belt. Starting with the beginning, beginning of the Christian era in Alexandria, the evidence trail starts to become sketchy. In the year 400, the Bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, visited Alexandria and reported that, quote,

his tomb even his own people know not. So maybe by the year 400, it had already disappeared. However, there are other later reports which are to the contrary. In the 9th century, the Islamic historians, Ibn Abid al-Hakam and El Masudi, both wrote of visiting the tomb of Alexander. A North African Christian convert and geographer known as Leo the African wrote in the 16th century, quote, In the midst of the ruins of Alexandria, there still remains a small edifice, built like a chapel, worthy of notice on account of a remarkable tomb held in high honor by the Mohammedans, in which sepulchre they assert is preserve the body of Alexander the Great.

An immense crowd of strangers comes tither, and even from distant countries for the sake of worshiping and doing homage to the tomb, on which they likewise frequently bestow considerable donations, end quote. As late as 1611, an English poet by the name of George Sandys claimed to have seen the sepulchre of Alexander. After that, it just sort of disappeared from history. For several hundred years now, people have been looking for the tomb of Alexander the Great. The main problem is, it was never really recorded where in the city it was.

We know exactly where the lighthouse of Alexandria was. we know reasonably well sort of where the library was. However, the tomb of Alexander is a total mystery. Over 140 different places in Alexandria have been identified as possible locations of the tomb. Not just that, but some researchers have claimed that the body of Alexander actually ended up in Iguyen Macedonia, and yet others claim to have found the real tomb in Siwa in Egypt. In my very amateur opinion, I find these claims to be pretty unpersuasive, given the number of historical reports of people going to Alexander's tomb in Alexandria and actually seeing and touching his physical corpse. If you ever visit the city of Alexandria, one of the things you'll notice is that

there aren't a whole lot of ancient ruins. It's not like visiting Rome or Athens. Much of this has to do with the fact that Alexandria has sunk over the centuries. Because it's built on land in the Nile Delta, it sings on average about 2.5 millimeters per year. Plus, there was a tsunami that hit the city in the year 356. It's only been recently that archaeologists have been able to get down to the Ptolemaic part of the city, which is now 35 feet below the surface. There was a great National Geographic special which came out about two years ago on the search for the tomb. So far, they've found a marble statue of Alexander, but no tomb. I will end this episode with one other theory that I don't necessarily subscribe to, but it's interesting enough to bring up.

A British author named Andrew Chugg has written two books on the hypothesis that the final resting place of Alexander the Great is actually in Venice, Venice. The cathedral in Venice is St. Mark's Cathedral. It's named such because in the 9th century, Venetian traders supposedly went to Alexandria and stole the corpse of St. Mark and brought it back to Venice. When they went into the church to take the remains, they found the remains of two people. because they couldn't tell which was St. Mark, they just stole both of them and brought both of them back to Italy. A renovation of the cathedral in the 19th century confirmed that there were in fact two bodies in the crypt, which supposedly holds the remains of St. Mark. Chugg's theory is that one of those remains belongs to Alexander the Great. To date, no DNA or Carbon 14 dating has been done on either set of the remains. As of right now, no one really knows what happened to the tomb of Alexander the Great. If it's a time,

still exists, it's probably sitting somewhere below the streets of modern day Alexandria just waiting to be discovered. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiever. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available.

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