Tomb’s treasure

Press, 12 August 1980, Page 17

Tomb’s treasure

By

HAROLD BYATT,

“Observer,” London

The "Search for Alexander” exhibition, which opened last month at the Salonica Archaelogical Museum, is built round a hundred magnificient finds of gold and silver.

Yet one of the most fascinating exhibits is a scrap of cloth in royal purple and gold. Embroidered with birds and trailing plants, it has survived for 2400 years in the dry, Greek climate. The finds come from theroyal burial mound of Vergina, which may include the tomb of King. Philip 11, the father of Alexander the Great, who became the greatest warrior of the war-like kingdom of ancient Macedonia.

They came to light three years ago, when Professor Manolis Andronicos of Salonica University reopened the 40-ft high tumulus at the’ edge of the village and unearthed two golden burials in a vaulted stone tomb with a frescoed temple facade. 1 Th§ ancign| Macedon-

fans, despised by . the Athenian orator Demosthenes as aggressively undemocratic northerners, never found much favour with other Greeks. Certainly, the finds on display leave no doubt of a taste for ostentation. But the workmanship is splendid, a reminder that Philip, brought the best

Athenian craftsmen and intellectuals to his court, among them Aristotle, to tutor his son. The immediate attraction is treasure: two solid gold caskets, embossed with the’ starhurst emblem of the Macedonian royal house, which held the royal bones, glittering golden wreaths of dak leaves, strips of gold decorating an iron cuirass, and a host of silver jugs and cups. At the opening of the exhibition, Professor Andronicos gavg visitors a

glimpse of another royal tomb in the Vergina mound, which appears to have a facade of four freestanding pillars. Excavation is due to start this month, and is expected to reveal the remains of another fourth century BC Macedonian nobler Philip II was murdered at ,his daughter’s wedding

in 336 BC, shortly before he was due to lead a Macedonian expedition against the Persian Empire. Alexander, then 20, inherited command and took his armies through Central Asia to India, the edge of the known world.

Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC, before he could turn his attention westward, and was buried in Alexandria. His tomb has not been found, but the legend of conquest and personal heroism has never faded.