[HN Gopher] Alexander the Great's tunic identified in royal tomb...
___________________________________________________________________
Alexander the Great's tunic identified in royal tomb at Vergina?
Author : fork-bomber
Score : 242 points
Date : 2024-11-01 12:54 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tandfonline.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tandfonline.com)
| bhouston wrote:
| Time to do the Jurassic Park thing and bring him back! (Well at
| least a genetic clone.)
| relistan wrote:
| Not sure about Alexander, but I'm here for Lincoln.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Wasn't that the plot of "GI Joe: The Movie"?
| squiffsquiff wrote:
| The did an episode of star trek next generation with this
| https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Kahless_(clone)
| nayroclade wrote:
| That episode presents quite a plausible scenario for why
| notable historical figures might be cloned, in my opinion:
| Participants in a contemporary power struggle wanting to
| use their talismanic status for political ends.
| derektank wrote:
| New Great Filter just dropped: Once a technological
| civilization develops cloning and ancient DNA analysis they
| decide to revive all the greatest warlords and conquerors in
| their history and, to everyone's surprise, all the Will to
| Power types cause a global thermonuclear conflict
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| But they can't fetch the memories and psychological traumas
| right? The person would just look like the old person then
| and no personality resembling the old one.
| alex_young wrote:
| Shh. You'll upset the puritans.
| fluoridation wrote:
| They also won't be in the same political position. There
| aren't that many historically important men that started
| out as true nobodies.
| kijin wrote:
| They just as well might be, if they are treated as
| Alexander Reincarnate by everyone around them from a very
| young age.
|
| Not all clones will survive the pressure of all the
| expectations upon them, but we only need one of them to
| accept his destiny as Kwisatz Haderach.
| taneliv wrote:
| What now does this all have to do with shortening the
| distance? Or do you mean something else than
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefitzat_haderech ?
| foolswisdom wrote:
| Appears to be a reference to
| https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Kwisatz_Haderach
| sophacles wrote:
| It has everything to do with shortening the distance!
|
| You see there was a prophecy among the Bene Gesserit that
| a careful human breeding program could produce a
| genetically perfect man who could survive taking the
| water of life. This would enable in him an ability
| similar to that the Guild Navigators employ to guide
| their ships, but for the course of all humanity rather
| than the course of a single heighliner.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that a clone of Alexander the Great
| wouldn't start out as a true nobody.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Compared to the prince of Macedon? Yeah, pretty much zero
| political power.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| He would win the election in Greece in a heartbeat
| arp242 wrote:
| Not before Greece and North Macedonia declare war over
| who gets to claim the Alexander clone.
| usrusr wrote:
| Well, whoever gets to have an election first, right? But
| then there's that thing about clones, why not both!
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The top 3 scores for 20th century atrocities are held by
| people who started off as nobodies.
|
| People who rise to the occasion in times of national
| crisis seem to frequently be people who are on the line
| between somebody and nobody with people like George
| Washington and Caesar toward the "somebody" end and
| people like Napoleon and Eisenhower on the nobody end.
| Novosell wrote:
| Hitler, Stalin and Mao or did you have others in mind?
| pwillia7 wrote:
| they can't fetch the memories and psychological traumas so
| far
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Is there a hypothetical way to fetch that?
| arunix wrote:
| In The Boys from Brazil, they try to get around that by
| creating circumstances similar to that experienced by the
| historical warlord.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_from_Brazil_(film)
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| Fate/Great Filter
| busseio wrote:
| This is the plot-line behind the Serpentor story arc in GI
| Joe, but they mix all the best-worst parts together into one
| bad guy.
| jgon wrote:
| Shades of The Book of the New Sun, and Severian reviving
| Typhon only to realize what sort of threat he poses.
| thom wrote:
| Just his stuff, not actually his tomb (which is presumably
| still somewhere in Egypt, but who knows).
| tokai wrote:
| In Alexandria, destroyed in the ~5th century. Its was a holy
| site for centuries and we have many sources on it. But we
| don't know what happen to his mummy during the destruction.
| saas_sam wrote:
| There's a compelling theory that Alexander's body was moved
| to the Basilica of Saint Mark in Venice, Italy!
| thom wrote:
| Or indeed its nose!
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Is there a program that can generate 3D view of a human by
| reading DNA?
| uptown wrote:
| Yep:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/science/dna-generated-
| fac...
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/creepy-or-
| cool...
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Would love to see representative pairs of predicted vs real
| faces.
| kadoban wrote:
| > There is, of course, no way of knowing how accurate
| Dewey-Hagborg's sculptures are--since the samples are from
| anonymous individuals
|
| From the second one. So who knows, it is fairly likely to
| just be a guess? If it were real, I'd expect better uses of
| it than just by bored artists.
|
| Edit: I should have checked the first one, they at least
| show an experiment (if a sloppy one). The results are...not
| great it seems if the goal is it being recognizable as the
| person in question.
| Eumenes wrote:
| The world could use another Alexander the Great about now
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| To destroy every existing country from Egypt to Pakistan,
| replacing them with a one-man-rule empire? And killing a
| large number of people to get there? And leaving behind a
| number of feuding generals when he dies, who create their own
| one-man-rule sub-empires?
|
| No thanks. What we have now isn't great, but I'm not sure
| that's an improvement.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Ironically, the United State's foreign policy is pretty
| similar to that, if the nations weren't conquered, they're
| controlled via friendly proxies.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| And use Chatgpt to fill his mind, what could go wrong?
| karaterobot wrote:
| I bet you could clone 1000 Alexanders, and none of them would
| be The Great. You'd need Aristotle as a tutor, and to inherit
| one of the best armies in the world from your dad, the king,
| and probably a million other little things would have to align
| in order to give you that combination of ambition and ability.
| If you can arrange all that, my intuition is that the genetic
| factors are probably of secondary importance.
| echelon wrote:
| Not to mention that the entire opportunity gradient is gone
| now.
| pennomi wrote:
| Best I can do is raise him on a steady diet of memes and
| Vtubers.
| PepperdineG wrote:
| You might end up with Khan Noonien Singh who will try and
| steal your ship then stick a bug in your ear
| asimpletune wrote:
| Wow, this is huge.
|
| There are so many other things described in ancient texts that
| have yet to be discovered. Herodotus for example is filled with
| references to places and things that were later discovered.
| However there are still many examples of pretty credible places
| and objects that remain undiscovered.
|
| Also, fwiw, people for some reason think it's ok or cool to
| criticize Herodotus' history. It's actually very good and he
| always says when he observed something for himself, or it's
| something that is said by others and he felt it was important to
| document. However his assumptions and methods are always stated.
| I think honestly the main problem is it's just a really long book
| so few ever read it.
|
| Thucydides is even better.
|
| It's such a shame there is virtually nothing surviving from
| people who personally knew Alexander. His entire rise is
| foreshadowed all throughout Thucydides, which is amazing
| considering that it predates him considerably.
| gavindean90 wrote:
| I like the way Bob Briar describes Herodotus as an ancient
| tourist/journalist.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _It's such a shame there is virtually nothing surviving from
| people who personally knew Alexander._
|
| To me it's also just incredible how short his life was, and I
| imagine that contributes to how scarce first-hand accounts are.
| He started taking part in military campaigns at 16, became king
| at 20, and was dead by 32. The Wikipedia article about him
| mentions he had a historian (or more than one); it's a shame
| none of those accounts survived to today.
|
| Sure, life expectancy back then was not what it was today, but
| he was still fairly young, and did a remarkable amount of
| conquering and expansion in a decade.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > It's such a shame there is virtually nothing surviving from
| people who personally knew Alexander.
|
| Did you forget the guy who's texts were the foundation of our
| civilization? Most of Aristotle's works are lost, but there is
| still much to read from Alexander's tutor.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Is anyone qualified to weigh in on the academic robustness of
| this?
|
| I only scanned a few bits but I was surprised to see statements
| like "the male skeleton had a knee injury, thus conclusively
| proving it was Philip" and "the female skeleton was 18 therefore
| proving it was Cleopatra since sources say she was young".
| (Paraphrasing) Etc etc. Is that all it takes to "prove"
| something? Could it not just be coincidence and it was someone
| else with a knee injury and some other ~18 year old? Or is that
| as far as we need to go in archeology to prove something? Put 2
| and 2 together and come up with Cleopatra?
|
| There also seems to be some sort of almost personal/ad hominem
| type stuff later on about other researchers who apparently
| criticised the author's work which surprised me ("Prag, Musgrave,
| and Neave continue to argue that I remain silent about Cyna ...
| as if it is an important issue"...)
|
| Is this legit research?
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Not an academic, not an expert, but...
|
| The history of the elites in this period is quite well
| documented from multiple sources. There are some minor royals -
| third and fourth sons - where little is known other than some
| titles and lands granted, but the historical record is both
| comprehensive and considered accurate, particularly for those
| whose stories were quite shocking like the 7th wife of Philip
| II (Cleopatra Eurydice, the young woman whose remains are being
| discussed), whose death may have been suicide, or a murder made
| to look like suicide...
|
| The thread they're pulling on seems to start here, from the
| paper:
|
| > There is a unanimous agreement that Tomb III belongs to King
| Alexander IV, the son of the Great Alexander. This is important
| because it shows that the Great Tumulus belongs mainly to the
| Kings of the Argead dynasty, and this contributes significantly
| to the identification of Tombs I and II as belonging to either
| Philip II or Arrhidaeus
|
| If accept that unanimous agreement is well-founded, and it is
| beyond any reasonable doubt that Tomb III belongs to the son of
| the Great Alexander, then it seems very likely that Tombs I and
| II must belong to Philip II or Arrhidaeus. The paper seems to
| then try and work out which one belongs to who.
|
| Now you look through the historical record of each, and you
| identify that there are multiple sources indicating that Philip
| had a young wife (Cleopatra Eurydice), who had a young son who
| was murdered [1]. Then you find a tomb that along with a male,
| has a younger female with an infant son interred. There is no
| other known tomb that contains similar remains. That matches
| Philip II, but does not match Arrhidaeus.
|
| You then look at the other tomb, and realise those remains
| better matches Arrhidaeus.
|
| This is not proof in a scientific sense, it's not irrefutable,
| but you have to ask if the young woman and infant are not
| Cleopatra Eurydice and her son Caranus, who exactly are they?
| Which other persons match the known historical records? If
| they're people from outside of the known record, just how
| likely is it that they would be buried in this specific context
| of a tomb neighboring Alexander IV? Unless you then want to
| unpick that assumption of Alexander IV of course, which you're
| entitled to do, but you're now pushing back against a
| collective assumption with some significant weight (and I
| presume, evidence), behind it.
|
| The rest of the paper starts to pull at the logic of other
| papers published over the last 60 years or so to help develop
| the case further, but in reality without some better science
| that seems absent (radio carbon dating, DNA analysis to show
| familial relationships of remains, and so on), it might be hard
| to get it over the line from "seems very likely to be the best
| explanation given what we know today" into "almost impossible
| to be explained any other way".
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_Eurydice
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| And if someone thinks this guy is wrong, then they can write
| an article with their opposing evidence and interpretations.
| And that's how we do science.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| I think you mean "mathematical sense" as proofs are deductive
| implications (apriori). Science, an abductive and empirical
| practice (posteriori) does not have proofs either.
| sgc wrote:
| Apologies for the long response.
|
| I am only partially qualified in that I am not a professional
| archeologist, but I have done post-doctoral archeological
| studies and have read enough archeological studies to
| understand the larger academic context.
|
| It is not possible to present all the data informing a judgment
| in such a short work. Even in a book, it would not be possible.
| Thus it is common in archeology for papers to be written as
| part of an ongoing conversation / debate with the community -
| which would be defined as the small handful of other
| archeologists doing serious research on the same specific
| subject matter.
|
| Part of that context here is that these tombs are well-
| established to be the royal tombs of Alexander's family,
| spanning a few generations including his father and his son.
| This is one of the most heavily studied sites in Greece for
| obvious reasons, and that is not something anybody is trying to
| prove.
|
| In that context, his arguments are trying to identify any body
| as one among millions, but as one among a small handful of
| under ten possibilities.
|
| At the same time, the fact that he is not a native English
| speaker and general archeological style come into play. For
| example:
|
| "the painter must have watched a Persian gazelle in Persia,
| since he painted it so naturalistically (contra Brecoulaki
| Citation2006). So the painter of Tomb II has to be Philoxenus
| of Eretria" sounds like a massive leap, and it is. He
| continues:
|
| "... Tomb I (Tomb of Persephone) must have been painted hastily
| by Nicomachus of Thebes (Andronikos Citation1984; Borza
| Citation1987; Brecoulaki et al. Citation2023, 100), who was a
| very fast painter (Saatsoglou-Paliadeli Citation2011, 286) and
| was famous for painting the Rape of Persephone (Pliny, N. H.
| 35.108-109), perhaps that of Tomb I."
|
| Another huge leap, both 'presented as conclusions'. However he
| then continues to indicate these are just hypotheses: "These
| hypotheses are consistent with the dates of the tombs..."
|
| So his English language use of presenting things factually does
| not indicate certainty in the way the words would be used in
| everyday speech. He seems to perhaps misunderstand the force of
| the terms, but also appears to be working within the context of
| the conversation with other archeologists I mentioned to start:
| They all know every affirmation is as "probably", rarely
| anything more. So it is relatively common shorthand of the
| craft in that sense.
|
| I believe you are overthinking his responses to other authors,
| although I understand the culture shock. It is an ongoing
| conversation and archeologists tend to be blunt in their
| assessments. Add Greek bluntness on top of this, and it does
| not seem to matter to the material.
|
| As to your last question, is this legitimate research? The
| answer overall appears to be yes, although I could see several
| points (such as the identification of artists I quoted above,
| and various items I noticed), which I would never have put into
| ink the way he did. Still, most of his arguments are
| compelling. It is a shame that the aggressiveness of a few
| affirmations detract from the overall value of his work.
| Archeology is not code nor is it physics. It does not pursue
| universal truths that are more easy to verify through repeated
| experiments, but unique historical ones which necessarily
| attempt to interweave physical details and ancient historical
| records. Each field has its own level of certainty, and the
| fact that we cannot establish these details with the same
| certainty as we can establish the chemical formula for water
| does not make them useless, or pure inventions. Far from it.
| openrisk wrote:
| > Archeology is not code nor is it physics.
|
| Indeed, but after scanning this article that pulls in all
| those pieces of indirect evidence I wondered whether some
| type of structured knowledge database (that encodes the
| innumerable pieces of historical information that are known,
| tags them with confidence levels etc.) would not be useful to
| advance research in such domains.
|
| Something like a large collection of RDF triplets against
| which you could run a query like "Given this new data point
| how (more)likely that Alexander the Great's tunic is
| identified in a royal tomb at Vergina?"
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Something like this, perhaps?
| https://digitalculture.uchicago.edu/platforms/ochre-
| overview...
| sgc wrote:
| To me it sounds like it could (and likely would) backfire,
| by replacing judgment with numbers. Who is giving the
| confidence score? What confidence score does each
| confidence score receive? Why are those scores more valid
| than the expert in that very narrow domain? If that expert
| is the one giving the scores, are they not just
| gatekeeping? Et cetera. I don't want to see researchers
| rewriting their papers because their cumulative source
| score is 68.17, and it should be 72.5 or higher.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| also, there have been points in time where established
| archeology was wrong, and this seems like it would
| produce a bias towards what we currently think is true.
|
| for example, theories on how the Polynesian migration
| came to be are still in flux, to the point where one
| theory was attempted to be proven by actually sailing to
| the different islands using only traditional wayfinding.
| mmooss wrote:
| You would attach names and dates to the numbers, as with
| any scientific publishing.
| openrisk wrote:
| > replacing judgment with numbers
|
| I would phrase it otherwise: _supporting_ judgement with
| numbers. Its not about altering conclusions, but making
| more transparent the factual basis and associated
| reasoning from which they are derived.
|
| The analogy would be trying some exotic food and having a
| list of ingredients. Yes, good to listen to a local as to
| how it tastes (and whether it cures all diseases), but if
| the indication is: 50% sugar, thats a data point worth
| knowing.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think that, effectively, the corpus of research papers
| and citation links is this knowledge database. It isn't
| structured the way I would structure it in postgres but it
| seems to be working quite well for the professionals in
| this field.
|
| I know there have been some interesting finds when an
| archeologist has dug up a site report from the 1840s that
| had long laid ignored by academia but these are quite rare
| occurrences and the scale of people involved here (when
| we're talking about something hyper specific) is so small
| that they can probably just sort it out by talking to one
| another.
|
| For the outside public such a neatly tagged database might
| be helpful if someone outside of the circle wants to
| independently research a subject in depth but, honestly,
| these folks are pretty open to questions and discussions so
| if you're extremely interested in Gobekli Tepe or some such
| there's someone out there who is happy to start a
| conversation with you.
| openrisk wrote:
| > the corpus of research papers and citation links is
| this knowledge database
|
| yes, I think so too. In the typical fashion of "pre-
| digital" information management systems it is extremely
| economical in the way it encodes things, with statements
| like "X is true as shown \cite{Y}" etc. But...
|
| > but it seems to be working quite well for the
| professionals in this field
|
| what prompted my comment is exactly the fact that didn't
| seem to work that well in this case :-) (nb: I am not
| remotely an archeology boffin, just triggered by the
| adversarial language of the paper).
|
| In more quantitative fields people talk about
| reproducible research, here its more a question of
| whether similar fields would benefit from "reproducible
| chains of reasoning".
| mmooss wrote:
| > it seems to be working quite well for the professionals
| in this field
|
| That is the universal response to new technology: What
| we're doing is working fine! What they are saying is,
| 'everything we've accomplished has been with the old
| technology'.
|
| I promise that was heard from engineers and architects
| encountering CAD, from cavalry asked to give up their
| horses (the conservative urge is so great, many died
| charging machine guns!), by literary scholars presented
| with computerized tools, .... it's always the same. One
| person who installed the first email systems for many
| businesses told me that, over and over, people would say
| 'our paper memos work fine - this is just technology for
| technology sake'. They meant, 'everything we've
| accomplished, we've done it with paper memos'.
|
| New technology lets you do old things much faster and/or
| lets you do new things you couldn't do before - new
| things you didn't dream of doing, and as people discover
| uses for it, new things you won't know about for years.
| vkou wrote:
| And the universal argument that people pushing tech are
| making boils down to 'I don't understand your field, or
| the particular needs of it, but I'd like to sell you a
| process that _I_ invented. I 'm not going to be held
| responsible for any bad consequences of you adopting it.'
|
| Unsurprisingly, people tend to resist this sort of thing.
|
| Sometimes the local maximum people are stuck in sucks,
| and they need a shakeup.
|
| That shakeup will not be well received when it comes from
| a complete stranger, who has no rapport with the
| community, with zero skin in the game.
| mmooss wrote:
| I agree 100%. The number one issue is buy-in, by the
| leadership and by the users. Without it, don't waste your
| time.
|
| Buy-in requires their input and demonstrable benefits to
| them.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| I really don't know why I stumbled into the comments section
| on this particular article, but while I'm here I have to
| commend you on writing perhaps the most thoughtful and
| eloquent comment I have ever read on HN.
| Taek wrote:
| Agreed, this is a "best of HN" class of comment.
| dang wrote:
| Added to https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights!
|
| All: when you notice an exceptionally good comment,
| please let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we can add
| it.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| Hey dang, would it be possible to add a "highlight"
| option hidden inside the timestamp like "vouch"?
| macintux wrote:
| There are some curious inclusions on that page, but the
| context link reveals that some highlights really aren't
| the comment, rather the discussion that it triggered.
|
| A "35 child comments" note or similar alongside the
| highlighted comments might encourage more browsing.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > So his English language use of presenting things factually
| does not indicate certainty in the way the words would be
| used in everyday speech. He seems to perhaps misunderstand
| the force of the terms
|
| He might or might not. It's also possible that academic
| practice in his native language is to use terms of equivalent
| force.
| lisper wrote:
| > Apologies for the long response.
|
| No need to apologize for that. But I think you have a sign
| inversion error here:
|
| > In that context, his arguments are trying to identify any
| body as one among millions
|
| I presume you meant "his arguments are NOT trying to
| identify..."?
| hammock wrote:
| Honestly seems about as robust as any other ancient history
| (not including pre-history). Herculaneum. Or great
| civilizations of the Americas. Or art "restoration." Or "early
| music" performance
|
| There is what we know, what we think we know, what we think and
| don't know, and what we don't know. And the size of those is in
| exponential ascending order
|
| None of this is to denigrate the robust and important work of
| historians and adjacent fields. It's just the reality
| verisimi wrote:
| > Put 2 and 2 together and come up with Cleopatra?
|
| This is exactly the problem. History is built on stories, it's
| just story upon story. Licensed historians are able to augment
| the existing history. The stories need have nothing to do with
| the truth of whatever might (or might not) have happened.
|
| Whenever you try to find the sources for this or that claim, it
| is impossible to do so, especially with anything ancient. When
| I have tried to do so, I come away feeling extremely
| dissatisfied, and in disagreement with whatever conclusions are
| being presented as fact. In every single case.
|
| To see what I mean, here is a link to some previous research I
| undertook on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37927639
| olddustytrail wrote:
| > So we only have 9 fragments from before 1900
|
| What exactly did you mean by this? Because it surely can't be
| what it sounds like...
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Didn't Cleopatra die at 39 years old? Your comment confuses me.
| arketyp wrote:
| Different Cleopatra
| gavindean90 wrote:
| There were a lot of Cleopatras so this may be a different,
| less famous one.
| sophacles wrote:
| Didn't John die in infancy? How can this gravestone say John
| died at 73?
| verisimi wrote:
| This is the Cleopatra that was also known as 'Clee'.
| Different to 'Patty', 'Cleo' or 'Trish'. All of whom were the
| most beautiful woman in the world in their time :)
| fsckboy wrote:
| according to wikip, the famous one was Cleopatra VII
| pm3003 wrote:
| Yes, in particular the points you cite have been widely
| discussed since the late 70s. The 'proofs' in question are not
| absolute mathematical proofs but strong hints around which
| cases have been made including a lot of elements. The cases are
| not that clearly cut,and there is not a lot of positive
| evidence for one thesis or the other but the phrasing here is
| good approximation.
|
| The research appears serious, but at first sight it doesn't
| seem to disprove any of the dominant thesis around Vergina.
|
| The question "who is in tomb II?" is still open. Though recent
| research has provided evidence against the occupant being
| Philip II (and being rather Philip III) there is still a good
| deal of evidence "for" Philip II. The case (for Philip II) made
| at the (very impressive) exhibition at the Vergina museum is
| well explained.
|
| The case for Cleopatra is even more tenuous but also very well
| explained.
| empath75 wrote:
| This is a controversial claim, FWIW.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/30/world/europe/alexander-th...
| troymc wrote:
| My summary: they claim (with evidence) that they found the sacred
| purple sarapis (tunic) of Alexander the Great, and possibly some
| of his other things.
| pluc wrote:
| I'll go a bit further and say that they don't claim it's
| Alexander's tomb, but someone that was buried with Alexander's
| artifacts (namely, his brother)
| armitron wrote:
| This is correct. Alexander is burried in Alexandria, Egypt.
| This discovery means that some of his artifacts were
| inherited by one of his siblings, moved back to Greece and
| burried with them.
| troymc wrote:
| AFAIK, the current location of Alexander's tomb is not
| known.
| armitron wrote:
| The exact location is not known but there is strong
| consensus amongst historians that he's burried in
| Alexandria.
| istultus wrote:
| As usual, "Conjecture Presented as Fact in Headline"
|
| They found a fabric in a royal tomb in Greece that fits the
| description of Alexander's famous sarapis. What is more likely -
| that this is Alexander's sarapis itself or that a very rich guy
| had one made just like it?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Alexander looks over crowd..hmm, that guy has a sarapis just
| like mine! Guards, have that man disembowelled!
| bertil wrote:
| That would explain the presence in a tomb...
| timdiggerm wrote:
| I doubt a man wearing a counterfeit version of a garment
| reserved only for kings would be given a nice tomb
| kadoban wrote:
| Or be allowed to be buried in the garment.
| ericmay wrote:
| > What is more likely - that this is Alexander's sarapis itself
| or that a very rich guy had one made just like it?
|
| I read through the original article though not very closely,
| and the authors wrote that the construction of the sarapis was
| unique in that nobody would have been allowed to construct one,
| and that the physical construction of the sarapis would have
| been profoundly expensive.
|
| It could be the case that another rich guy went and had one
| made, sure, but given the above two priors you'd have to
| answer: Who else at the time could afford to
| have such a sarapis constructed? Is there a record of
| anyone with a similarly designed and constructed sarapis?
| Historians seem to have a good idea of who was rich and/or
| noble in the area at the time. If someone at the time
| constructed a similarly designed sarapis in the region, who
| would have built it and why wouldn't have someone basically
| told on them for trying to copy the God King?
|
| I don't think your point is invalid, but it would raise more
| questions that as far as I'm aware there seems to be little
| evidence for and introduce impractical logistics for the time
| period.
| infecto wrote:
| I think people forget that in those times production was
| tightly controlled and most likely the construction of such a
| cloth without permissions would most likely be met with
| execution.
| ericmay wrote:
| I agree - thank you for writing that more pointedly than I
| did in my post.
| ipinak wrote:
| A very rich guy made one and put it the tomb? Your comment is
| the conjecture here. Which begs the question, why you even
| doing that?
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Pics ?
| kylecazar wrote:
| You can see images on other sites, but it just looks like a
| bunch of purple shredded paper in a box to my untrained eye.
|
| https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/sac...
| a12k wrote:
| This is awesome and very historic. I'm hoping it ends up in a
| glass case at Meta HQ though so many people can appreciate it
| rather than in a closet in Palo Alto.
| gargalatas wrote:
| I would never expect such a Greek matter would become headline in
| here. Turns out that Alexander the Great was globally accepted.
|
| But let me clarify from what I have read that it's just a
| conjecture and not a very strong one.
| lolinder wrote:
| It would never have occurred to me that a Greek would assume
| that Alexander the Great was just a local hero!
|
| In the US, anyone who remembers _any_ ancient history will
| remember Alexander the Great. He 's a part of every single
| world history curriculum, and for good reason. Whether by his
| own skill or luck, he reshaped most of Eurasia in his lifetime.
| romanhn wrote:
| Not just the US. As a kid growing up in Russia, I was very
| aware of Alexander's prominence (known to us as Alexander the
| Macedonian).
| markdown wrote:
| I mean, it was in the curriculum in Fiji where I studied.
| Stupid of course, because we had to learn the histories of
| far away places (literally on the other side of the world)
| more than our own history.
| stavros wrote:
| As a Greek, it's very weird to me that someone would think
| Alexander the Great isn't well-known worldwide. Interesting
| that someone is surprised.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| The entire western world draws its cultural lineage through the
| ancient greek civilizations, most of us sub-consciously
| consider ancient greek history "our" history. Even relatively
| un-educated New Zealanders on the exact opposite side of the
| world know who Alexander the Great is.
| moffkalast wrote:
| They wouldn't call him "the Great" if he was just some guy.
| He's up there with Caesar, Napoleon, Genghis, Attila and the
| rest.
| architango wrote:
| Hans Gruber referred to him in "Die Hard," so that's good
| enough for me.
| rgreekguy wrote:
| I would have never expected such a Greek matter to not be
| polluted by some beloved neighbours to the North of ours!
| kelnos wrote:
| Alexander the Great was taught in my US high-school world
| history class. I was very fuzzy on the details of his life
| (time period, exactly where he was from and what he did), but
| he was Kinda a Big Deal for the world, not just ancient Greece.
| rwl4 wrote:
| Just in case anybody is interested in a bit more of a casual
| format, I had NotebookLM create a podcast from the paper.
|
| https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/0bef03c4-3ed5-4b13-90...
| anoncow wrote:
| That was enjoyable. I have doubts as to how close this was to
| the article (but I have no patience to verify).
| ourmandave wrote:
| Makes me want to re-watch _The Man Who Would Be King_ again.
| permo-w wrote:
| that is a truly terribly written abstract
| mmooss wrote:
| > the _sacred_ Persian mesoleucon sarapis which belonged to
| Pharaoh and King Alexander the Great
|
| [italicizing added]
|
| _sacred_ means something religious or divine. While Alexander
| the Great is very famous, does or did anyone who came after
| consider Alexander to be divine? For example, while people very
| much admire Abraham Lincoln, nobody would associate Lincoln with
| divinity.
|
| Another comment says that English may not be the first language
| of the author, so perhaps 'sacred' wasn't meant precisely. And it
| could be used, even by an English speaker, imprecisely (hopefully
| not in published research) or in an exaggerated fashion (also
| probably doesn't belong in published research).
|
| Still, I find it interesting how a little overenthusiasm and
| subtle shift in terminology can change perceptions of someone.
|
| EDIT: Better stated: Here is a modern historian calling the
| sarapis _sacred_. Why? Sacred to whom?
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| It was not uncommon for rulers in the ancient Near East to
| claim to be divine, or descended from the gods.
|
| When Alexander conquered Egypt, he took on the role of Pharaoh,
| and claimed to be the son of Ra. He also began calling himself
| the son of Zeus.
|
| Abraham Lincoln isn't considered a deity, but American
| political culture is very different from 4th-Century BC
| Hellenistic political culture.
| mmooss wrote:
| But here is a modern historian calling Alexander's clothes
| 'sacred'. Why?
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Because in the historical context, they were considered
| sacred.
| mmooss wrote:
| Thanks. It's not that I'm ignorant of that. I'm trying to
| explore which historical contexts - and possibly modern
| ones - consider Alexander to be 'sacred' and why.
| bombcar wrote:
| They might not divinize Lincoln but they certainly do
| Washington:
|
| https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/apotheosis-wa...
| Morizero wrote:
| Picture of the remains of the tunic, since I didn't see one in
| the article:
|
| https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1t...
|
| > The revered tunic is is in fragmentary state and many small
| pieces less than 6cm (2.3 inches). It's pictured here in a shot
| from its discovery at Vergina in 1977
|
| Source: https://www.msn.com/en-ae/news/other/alexander-the-great-
| s-l...
| readyplayernull wrote:
| The box alone is a very interesting object. I guess it's made
| of gold? And the modular hinge. Hope they do a 3D scan.
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