page_title: Tomb of Alexander the Great
section_title: Present location
hierarchical_section_title: Tomb of Alexander the Great / Present location
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Alexandria Deutsch: Karte vom antiken Alexandrien
context_page_description: The location of the tomb of Alexander the Great is an enduring mystery. Shortly after Alexander's death in Babylon, the possession of his body became a subject of negotiations between Perdiccas, Ptolemy I Soter, and Seleucus I Nicator. According to Nicholas J. Saunders, while Babylon was the "obvious site" for Alexander's resting place, some favored interring the ruler in the Argead burial at Aegae, modern Vergina. Aegae was one of the two originally proposed resting places, according to Saunders, the other being Siwa Oasis and in 321 BC Perdiccas presumably chose Aegae. The body, however, was hijacked en route by Ptolemy I Soter. According to Pausanias and the contemporary Parian Chronicle records for the years 321–320 BC, Ptolemy initially buried Alexander in Memphis. In the late 4th or early 3rd century BC, during the early Ptolemaic dynasty, Alexander's body was transferred from Memphis to Alexandria, where it was reburied.
  The so-called Alexander Sarcophagus, unrelated to Alexander's body and once thought to be the sarcophagus of Abdalonymus, is now believed to be that of Mazaeus, a Persian governor of Babylon.
context_section_description: The Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities has officially recognized over 140 search attempts for Alexander's tomb. Mahmoud el-Falaki (1815–1885), who compiled the map of ancient Alexandria, believed Alexander's tomb is in the center of Alexandria, at the intersection of the Via Canopica (modern Horreya Avenue) and the ancient street labeled R5. Since then several other scholars such as Tasos Neroutsos, Heinrich Kiepert and Ernst von Sieglin placed the tomb in the same area. In 1850 Ambroise Schilizzi announced the discovery of alleged Alexander's mummy and tomb inside the Nabi Daniel Mosque in Alexandria. Later, in 1879 a stone worker accidentally broke through the vaulted chamber inside the basement of that mosque. Some granite monuments with an angular summit were discerned there, but the entrance was then walled up and the stone worker was asked not to disclose the incident. (The image on a Roman lamp in the National Museum of Poznań and others at the British Museum and the Hermitage Museum are interpreted by some scholars as showing Alexandria with the Soma Mausoleum pictured as a building with a pyramidal roof.) In 1888 Heinrich Schliemann attempted to locate Alexander's tomb within the Nabi Daniel Mosque, but he was denied permission to excavate.
  In 1993, Triantafyllos Papazois developed the theory that it is not Philip II of Macedon who is buried in the royal tomb II at Vergina, Greece, but it is Alexander the Great together with his wife Roxanne, while his son Alexander IV is buried in tomb III. Also based on the ancient historical sources he came to the conclusion that the breastplate, the shield, the helmet and the sword found in tomb II, belong to the armor of Alexander the Great.
  In 1995, Greek archaeologist Liana Souvaltzi announced that she identified one alleged tomb in Siwah with that of Alexander. The claim was put in doubt by the then general secretary of the Greek Ministry of Culture, George Thomas, who said that it was unclear whether or not the excavated structure is even a tomb. Thomas and members of his team said that the style of the excavated object was not, as Souvaltzi contended, Macedonian, and that the fragments of tablets they were shown did not support any of the translations provided by Souvaltzi as proof of her finding.
  According to one legend, the body lies in a crypt beneath an early Christian church.
  In a 2011 episode of the National Geographic Channel television series Mystery Files, Andrew Chugg claimed that Alexander the Great's body was stolen from Alexandria, Egypt, by Venetian merchants who believed it to be that of Saint Mark the Evangelist. They smuggled the remains to Venice, where they were then venerated as Saint Mark the Evangelist in the Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco.
  The 2014 discovery of a large Alexander-era tomb at Kasta Tomb in Amphipolis in the region of Macedonia, Greece, has once again led to speculation about Alexander's final resting place. Some have speculated that it was built for Alexander but never used due to Ptolemy I Soter having seized the funeral cortege. They suggest that the Roman Emperor Caracalla, a great admirer of Alexander, may have had him re-interred in Amphipolis in the late second century AD. However, only future excavation at Amphipolis will reveal if there is any truth in the suggestion. In November 2014, a skeleton was discovered within the tomb, and its full examination is expected to last a few months in order to determine the characteristics of the deceased person in the effort to identify it. However, the excavation team, based on findings unearthed at the site, argued that the tomb was a memorial dedicated to the close friend of Alexander the Great, Hephaestion.
  In 2019, a marble statue of Alexander was found by a Greek archaeologist, Calliope Limneos-Papakosta, who has been excavating for 14 years in the Shallalat Gardens, which occupies the ancient royal quarter in Alexandria.
caption: 1893 map of Alexandria
exif: {}