ATHENS:
A priceless gold garland has been unearthed in an ancient city in northern
Greece, inhumed with human bones in a large copper vase that workers initially
took for a land mine.
The
University of Thessaloniki said on Friday that the "astonishing" discovery was
made during its excavations this week in the ruins of ancient Aigai. The city
was the low capital of ancient Macedonia, where King Philip II�father of
Alexander the Great�was
assassinated.
Gold wreaths are
rare and were inhumed with ancient nobles or royalty. But the find oneself is also highly
unusual as the artifacts appear to have been distant from a grave during ancient
times and, for reasons that are ill-defined, reburied in the city's marketplace nigh
the theater where Philip was stabbed to
death.
"This happened quite
shortly after the original burying; it's non that a grave robber took it centuries
by and by and hid it with the purpose of coming back," excavator Chryssoula
Saatsoglou-Paliadeli aforesaid. "It in all likelihood belonged to a upper-level
person."
The "impressively
bombastic" copper watercraft contained a cylindrical golden jar with a eyelid, with the
gold lei of oak leaves and the finger cymbals inside. "The young working man who saw it
was astounded and shouted 'land mine!'" the university
said.
Saatsoglou-Paliadeli, a
prof of archeology at the university, said the observe probably dates to the
4th century BC, during which Philip and Alexander reigned. "Archaeologists must
explain why such a grouping...was found outside the extensive royal cemetery," the
university aforementioned. "(They must also) exploit out why the clappers of the unknown-but by
no means insignificant-person were hidden in the city's most public and hallowed
area."
During the 4th century
BC, burials outside organized cemeteries were very uncommon. In a royal necropolis
at Vergina, just westward of Aigai, Greek archaeologists discovered a wealth of gold
and silver treasure in 1977. One of the luxurious graves, which contained a large
gold wreath of oak leaves, is by and large accepted to have belonged to Philip II.
The emplacement of Alexander's tomb is one of the large mysteries of archaeology.
More info
