Amphipolis
Archaeologists have reported finding a tomb near Seres
(close to Amphipolis, in Greek Macedonia)which could possibly be the grave of
Alexander’s Soghdian widow, Roxana and her son Alexander IV (Iskander in my
novel Shadow of the Lion)
For me, this is an exciting discovery because my
novel deals with the murder of Roxana and Iskander at Amphipolis and the events
leading up to it. In the archaeologist
report they say the boy was 12 years old. He was actually closer to 14 because he
was murdered just before he was old enough to legally claim the throne. His death, ordered by Kassandros, the villain
of my story and enemy of Alexander, ended the Argead line to the throne and
eventually the total end of Alexander’s dynasty.
Whether or not this is really the tomb of Roxana and
Iskander is another archaeological mystery and it may take ages to
unravel. But I was excited at the
publicity, because at this time my novel
is in the hands of an agent, and hopefully this find might generate new
interest in that period of history.
I’ve visited Amphipolis on two occasions when I was
researching the novel. It is an
interesting and even mysterious area. The first time I went there, as I walked
up the road toward the site the sky suddenly darkened and a bolt of forked
lightening zapped down right over the acropolis hill where the fortress had
been. At the point where a
bridge once crossed the Strymon River that runs alongside the acropolis hill, there
is a large stone lion – the grave marker of a soldier who was in Alexander’s
army. Where the bridge was located must be
haunted, because that is where the Persian King Xerxes had nine girls and nine
boys sacrificed to the river gods when the Persians were invading Greece in the 5th century BC.
On my second visit to Amphipolis I went right up to the top
of the hill, through the new town, and found the fortress ruins.
There were new digs there – to my surprise and delight they had
discovered the original walls beneath the ones built by the Romans. When I was
wandering around and asked the guard at the site about them he wouldn’t give me
any information but I knew that’s what they were. As I walked down the hill from the fortress below the walls,
planning the escape route Iskander and his friend Orion would take, on the path
ahead of me were the swirling marks left by a snake. There’s vipers in those hills. I took it as
an omen of some kind.
Amphipolis acropolis
To me, the spirits were very real around Amphipolis,
beginning with that lightening bolt I saw on my first visit and ending with the marks of the serpent on my last. A tragic event had happened there with the
murder by poison of Roxana and Iskander, after they had been held captive for
five years by Kassandros, on the pretext that he was keeping them safe from
harm until the boy could claim the throne.
The finding of this tomb and all its possibilities is an exciting turn of events
for me.
Then there’s a question:
If it IS the tomb and they find remains in it, whose remains are those
in the silver funery urn in Vergina’s Royal Tombs? They were found inside the small tomb next to
the one allegedly King Philip’s which is marked “Tomb of the Macedonian Prince”. When I questioned the archaeologist on site
he said they believe it to be the tomb of Alexander IV. Those bone fragments
in the urn would be his, along with all the funeral offerings found in the tomb
which included a pair of greaves, too large for a boy of 14, which I imagined
might have been Alexander’s as a youth (grave offerings were not necessarily
the belongings of the deceased). I’d
asked the archaeologist if they might do DNA testing on the remains against
those of the bones that are supposedly Philip’s. He thought it was an interesting
questions, but said the remains in the urn were too fragmented (powdered?) to do testing. But now, I wonder...
Whose ashes are in this funery urn?
The only other Macedonian prince who lived at that time was Alexander's illegitemate son, Herakles, who would have been about four years older than Iskander. He and his mother were murdered after the deaths of Roxana and Iskander, part of Kassandros's scheme to kill all living remnants of Alexander's family (including his sister, Kleopatra).
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