Mystery Deepens: Ancient Greek Tomb Linked to Alexander the Great’s Father Reveals Unexpected Family Secret
New Analysis Of Tomb I At Vergina, Thought To Hold King Philip II Of Macedon
Colin W./Wikimedia CommonsAn entrance to the royal tombs at Vergina in northern Greece.
In 1977, researchers in Vergina discovered a tomb complex known as the Great Tumulus. Located at the necropolis of Aegae, once the capital of Macedonia, the tombs were believed to hold the remains of Alexander the Great’s father, King Philip II, his older half-brother King Philip III Arrhidaeus, and his son, Alexander IV. Though the original researchers suspected that Philip II was in Tomb II, a study in 2024 suggested that he was in Tomb I.
But now, the results of that study have been challenged. In a new report published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, researchers found that the remains inside Tomb I at Vergina couldn’t possibly belong to Philip II, who was assassinated in 336 B.C.E when he was roughly 46 years old.
Instead, Tomb I, also known for its mural of Hades abducting Persephone, appears to hold a much younger man who was between 25 and 35 years old when he died. This man is buried alongside a woman — who died between the ages of 18 and 25 — and radiocarbon dating suggests that they both lived sometime between 388 and 356 B.C.E.
Public DomainA mural of Hades abducting Persephone that was painted on the walls of Tomb I at the Great Tumulus in Vergina.
Researchers also identified the remains of six infants inside Tomb I, and it’s believed that they too are unrelated to Alexander the Great. The infants’ remains date from 150 B.C.E to 130 C.E., the Roman era, and researchers suspect that they were simply placed in the tomb out of convenience by desperate people who just needed somewhere to put their dead.
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