Alexander the Great (born 356 BCE) died on 10 June 323 BCE, probably at the age of 32. Scholars disagree about the causes of his death, and the place in which he was buried. However, he died in Babylon in ancient Mesopotamia, and according to some accounts his dying wish was that his body should be thrown into the Euphrates River.
The pseudo-historian Callisthenes of Olynthus, an Alexandrian Greek priest and biographer of Alexander in 300 CE, tells us that Alexander died by poison. The Persians then tried to win the friendship of Alexander’s Macedonians and offered to bury him in their country and honour him as the god Mithras or the Persian Mithra.
The location of the tomb of Alexander the Great, one of the most famous leaders of the ancient world and founder of the city of Alexandria in Egypt, remains puzzling to archaeologists all over the world. Will it be possible someday to find the tomb of Alexander the Great? Are the remains of the tomb in Egypt? What is the truth of the story of the ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII stealing items from the tomb of Alexander the Great?
The search for Alexander’s tomb continues, and there are many opinions about where it might have been located.
One possibility is outside Egypt, and the discovery of a stone sarcophagus decorated with Alexander the Great imagery in Sidon, Lebanon, led to speculation that he might have been buried there. The sarcophagus is now in the Archaeology Museum in Istanbul. Most scholars, however, do not believe that this sarcophagus really belonged to Alexander, and they continue to debate who its owner was.
Another possibility is in Egypt’s Siwa Oasis. Some historians believe that Alexander was buried in Siwa because he visited the oasis and expressed the desire to be buried there. However, this belief is not supported by the available evidence, which suggests instead that he was buried in the city of Alexandria.
Shortly after Alexander’s death in Babylon, Perdiccas, Ptolemy, and Seleucus, the heirs of his empire, negotiated about where he should be buried. It was at first preferred to bury his body in Aegae in Macedonia, as Perdiccas advocated. The Siwa Oasis was also considered. Each of Alexander’s heirs desired that he be buried in the kingdom that he was going to inherit in order to legitimise his successorship. Alexander’s body was enclosed in a golden coffin to be transported to Macedonia in a specially made carriage.
When the carriage arrived in the Levant, however, Ptolemy, the future king of Egypt, diverted the cortege and took the sarcophagus to Memphis in Egypt. Alexander’s body was initially entombed there in the Saqqara Necropolis. A few decades later, it was moved to the Soma, a mausoleum in Alexandria’s royal quarter, probably during the reign of Ptolemy II.
The body remained in the Soma for several centuries. There are stories that some of the later Ptolemies raided the tomb for its riches. Ptolemy X melted down the golden coffin and replaced it with a crystal or glass one. Cleopatra VII took gold from the tomb to help finance her war against the Roman general Octavian, later the emperor Augustus.
Famous Romans visited the tomb, among them Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE) and Augustus himself (63 BCE-14 CE), who looked at the corpse with great respect and placed flowers at the tomb. It was also visited by the emperor Septimius Severus (145-211 CE), who placed all the sacred papyri he had collected from various temples inside Alexander’s glass sarcophagus.
The later history of Alexander the Great’s tomb is muddled by conflicting accounts. Some historians, such as Ibn Abdel-Hakam, Al-Masoudi, and Leo Africanus, claim to have visited the tomb between the 15th and 17th centuries. Most modern scholars, however, assume that the tomb had been largely destroyed by the fourth century through war, religious violence, or natural disaster.
Many famous archaeologists have tried to locate the tomb of Alexander, but without success. There have been over 100 documented attempts. Popular legend associates the tomb with the Nabi Daniel Mosque or the Attarine Mosque in Alexandria.
A stone sarcophagus inscribed for the pharaoh Nectanebo II, a predecessor of Alexander the Great, found in the Attarine Mosque and now in the British Museum is sometimes thought to have held the body of Alexander the Great. A popular theory is that the tomb was located at the intersection of the two main longitudinal and transverse streets in the ancient city of Alexandria, meaning that it is in the centre of the modern city between Kom Al-Dekka and the Nabi Daniel Mosque.
In 2009, Greek archaeologist Calliope Limneos-Papakosta from the Hellenic Research Institute of Alexandrian Civilisation excavated in the Shallalat Gardens area in the heart of the ancient city and found a rare white marble statue, currently on display in the Alexandria National Museum, which she proposes is of Alexander the Great. A suggestion that the tomb was located there remains unproven.
No certain archaeological traces of Alexander the Great’s tomb have yet been discovered, and the search persists to this day. The dream of finding the tomb continues to haunt the imaginations of enthusiasts around the world.
The writer is director of the Antiquities Museum at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 8 September, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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