Samaras expects 'exceptionally important find' at Ancient Amphipolis | Hacker News Reader

Samaras expects 'exceptionally important find' at Ancient Amphipolis

ekathimerini.com

46 pointsmegafounder18 comments

All pure speculation. They haven't even excavated yet, only outlined the walls.

They write so much in 3 different places, including literally admitting hype in the write-up: "There has been speculation that the tomb could contain the remains of Alexander the Great..."

Worse yet, this is old speculation news. Last year, nearly to the day, they (the Culture Ministry) made a similar announcement: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2401057/Have-...

This area is home to many excavation projects; google "site:.edu Amphipolis" and you'll see quite a lot of them.

worse yet, the excavation began in the 1960s.

Although you are not entirely wrong, "all pure speculation" is different than "this is a speculation based on some findings, so far".

Sorry, my language is harsh because I was addressing the nature of this writeup, which I labeled as "pure speculation." I work in the news industry, so I both experience and see this side of the news industry, and I don't like it. It's the un-informed PR rewrite story.

Way it happens is a general-assignment person (who writes well but has no specific topic knowledge) gets an assignment to write a story. The story originates from a press release. The press release is political: (culture ministry is an office, tasked with promotion amongst things). Politician bypasses actual archeologists and scientists and then peppers the story with speculation designed to boost their office priorities and awareness. "By the way, this is probably Alexander's tomb. Very exciting."

The person writing the story has no training in history, archeology or is generally aware of trends, claims and excavations. No clue what an in-situ find is. They look at the PR, look-up a few background factoids, rewrite the piece and publish it. As you walk by and ask how their morning is, they casually proclaim "did you know pp, they discovered Alexander's tomb this morning???"

I cringe and walk on.

Yup, you are not wrong. This particular newspaper (Kathimerini - "Daily" in greek) is known to be government-aligned and is basically jumping on every opportunity to make it look like more and more things are running better in the country.

It is also very much worth noting that the greek prime minister himself, Samaras, said "Please be patient for a few days - for a very important archeological discovery to be made". Alexander's tomb? "I told you so". Someone else's tomb? "This is still an important discovery, blah blah blah".

Some Greeks are very proud (even precious) about their cultural history. Check out this response to Dr Armand D'Angour's 'attempt to re-write Greek history' (and dont' forget to read the comments): http://eu.greekreporter.com/2014/07/23/bbc-attempts-to-rewri...

On the issue of Alexander specifically, it's important to note how important Alexander is in whole Greece/FYR Macedonia thing. Alexander was a Macedonian, of course, but what was then Macedonia is now part of Northern Greece, meaning the (modern) country of Macedonia can only be called (The Former Yugoslav Republic of) Macedonia. By 'locating' the tomb of Alexander in (modern) Greece, the Greeks further solidify their claim that Alexander is part of their cultural heritage, not (FYR) Macedonia's.

(This is interesting because when Alexander was actually alive, he did everything he could to make himself look more Greek, whereas the Greeks proper saw him as a barbarian Macedonian and wanted nothing to do with him...)

I am greek. :D

Yes, as I said, it's only /some/ Greeks that feel this way. I hope I haven't misrepresented the situation too much? (Please correct me if I'm wrong!)

No, you are pretty much right. Our national identity is our ancient (not just the cultural - more recent poets for example are not that prominent in our daily pride-talk, and more recent events like the civil war are comfortably omitted when we talk about "Greece") history. So there is a lot in stake for us with those matters.

However I would disagree with the "Macedonian barbarian" note you made: Alexander was educated by Aristoteles and he was elected as the main greek general in the war against the barbarians (Persians) by the rest of the greeks.

What hope is there for humanity if war mongering tyrants are at the very least not honored and worshiped. War and organized murder should not be a virtue, it should be a necessity for defense; after which you lay down your arms while still preparing for the possible necessity for defense from ever present psychopathic human demons.

This would conflict with the generally accepted story, that the Greek general Ptolemy took Alexander's body with him back to Egypt, where it was used to bring legitimacy to his new regime.

He was transported to Memphis, then Alexandria and was laid to rest there and Roman Emperor's used to come and pay respects at his tomb long after his death,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis,_Egypt#Ptolemaic_Period

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Alexander_the_Great

The title of this post is way off, it doesn't even reflect the actual article.

From what I've read the tomb is said to be 10 times bigger than that of Philippos his father. Now if history is correct and Ptolomy took Alexander's body to Egypt, could it not be so that the tomb was in any case originally built and intended for Alexander?

Couldn't the submitter have waited a few weeks until they actually found something? (Also, how did this get so many upvotes?) The article doesn't even quote the archaeologists, but only a government minister, for chrissake.

A few weeks? Well, they've been two years excavating as of the date of the article, and so far it looks like they've found a strange tomb. It may be years rather than weeks before they know anything definitive.

Unlikely. He was buried in Alexandria, then moved to the desert, then taken to Rome and lost. They might have found his family tomb in Greece however. They found his Dad about 20 years ago with lots of spectacular artifacts.

Another link with video http://greece.greekreporter.com/2014/08/11/the-mystery-of-an...

>>There has been speculation that the tomb could contain the remains of Alexander the Great or his wife, Roxana, and their son, Alexander IV.

TLDR

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