Study Confirms Remains as Philip II of Macedon

[rhoenix]

An anthropological team investigating cremated remains found in a royal tomb in Vergina, Greece, has claimed that the remains belong to King Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, and an unknown woman warrior.

Theodore Antikas, head of the Art-Anthropological research team of the Vergina excavation, suggests that she may have been the daughter of Scythian King Ateas. The tomb was one of three excavated from the same mound in the late 1970s by Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos. This tomb, known as Tomb II, had been intact, and it contained silver and bronze vessels, gold wreaths, weapons, armor, and two gold larnakes, or caskets. Antikas told Discovery News that the identification of the middle-aged, male skeleton was based upon marks on the bones.

“The individual suffered from frontal and maxillary sinusitis that might have been caused by an old facial trauma,” he said. Philip II was blinded when his right eye was hit with an arrow during the siege of Methone in 354 B.C. “He had signs of chronic pathology on the visceral surface of several low thoracic ribs, indicating pleuritis,” Antikas added of the warrior’s skeleton, which also showed signs of frequent horseback riding.

Traces of an object made of royal purple, huntite, textile, beeswax, and clay had been placed on top of the bones in the gold larnax. A pelvis bone fragment from the other casket indicates that the remains belonged to a woman who died between the ages of 30 and 34. She had suffered a fracture in her left leg that had shortened it. “This leads to the conclusion that the pair of mismatched greaves—the left is shorter—the Scythian gorytus, or bow case, and weaponry found in the antechamber belonged to her,” Antikas explained.

I've added paragraph breaks, since the article didn't have them.

So - they found Alexander the Great's dad, who was buried with an unnamed female soldier. Rather awesome, I thought.

[LadyTevar]

A bodyguard following him into death, or a lover?

[frigidmagi]

Crap, now I have to go and look up Macedonian burial rituals.

[Lys]

There has been a long running argument over whether this tomb belongs to Phillip II of Macedon, or to his son Phillip III Arrhidaeus of Macedon. A lot of the stylings on the tomb suggest that it was built after Alexander's conquest of Asia, and the presence of a warrior woman would also tend to suggest that it is Arrhidaeus' tomb. His wife (and niece) Eurydice was the granddaughter of Phillip II's first or second wife Audata, an Illyrian warrior princess. Audata stayed true to her Illyrian heritage and trained her daughter Cynane in the same tradition, and indeed Cynane went on to slay an Illyrian queen in battle at the head of a Macedonian army. She passed along the tradition to Eurydice, who was known to be the dominant partner in her marriage to Arrhidaeus. The two of them were defeated and murdered by Alexander the Great's mother Olympias during the wars of the Diadochi. After Olympias was herself murdered - stoned to death by the families of her victims - Cassander had Arrhidaeus and Euridice's remains buried with the other kings of Macedon.

On the other hand, the facial injury to the dead man's face is indeed far more consistent with Philip II's history than that of his son Phillip III. If it is Phillip II, then of his many wives (seven in all) two who stand out as good candidates for the other body in the tomb. First is Audata, who as I mentioned was an Illyrian princess who had been trained as a warrior. It makes sense for her to have armour and weapons buried with her. She died of unknown causes at an unknown date, suspected to be a year or two before Phillip's own death. On the other hand, Phillip does not seem to have been too broken up about her death, given he shortly thereafter took another wife and gave her the same married name - Eurydice - he had given Audata. The other good candidate is Meda of Odessos, a Thracian princess. She was so struck with grief at Phillip's death that she committed suicide to follow him into the afterlife. It is said that the Macedonians were so impressed by her devotion to their king, that they buried her with him. However, to the best of my knowledge she is not known to have been a warrior. Perhaps she was, but the none saw fit to record it.