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Exceptional burial assemblages from the Agora at Aegae (Vergina) I : The archaeological record and its historical interpretation

• Σαατσόγλου-Παλιαδέλη, Χρυσούλα
• Κυριακού, Αθανασία
• Μητσοπούλου, Ελένη
• Τούρτας, Αλέξανδρος

During the excavation period of 2008 an impressive funerary assemblage was discovered in the Sanctuary of Eukleia, part of the agora of ancient Aegae: the burial of a boy aged around 15-18 in a gold cylindrical pyxis placed inside a bronze vessel. The gold oak wreath on top of the burnt bones in the pyxis was the mostoutstanding element of the burial. During the excavation period of 2009 we continued exploring the fill where this assemblage was found. About 5 meters away another find came to light: a silver hydria and a silver Panathenaic amphora, one placed next to the other. The former, which resembles the onefrom the “Princes Tomb” in the Great Tumulus, consists of two parts -thus indicating that it was constructed especially for burial use- and contains the burial of an adult. The bones, once wrapped in a purple cloth, arc in a poor state of preservation. The latter is quite big andbears golden ornaments on the neck which are typical in the decorative system of clay Panathenaic amphorae; on the body incised patterns -which are not easy to trace prior to the conservation works- seem to belong to a figurai representation rather than a floral decoration.Silver Panathenaic amphorae, given as prizes during the famous Panathenaic games at Athens, are only known from the literary sources. From this point of view this precious find is, for the moment being, the only sample of this category. Last year we suggested that the burial, dated to the last years of the 4th c. BC and belonging to a male adolescent, might be attributed to a member of the royal house of the Temenids and especially Heracles, the illegitimate son of Alexander the Great, who was murdered and buried in Macedonia. The recent find does not contradict this suggestion: the adult skeleton in the hydria might actually belong to an escort of Heracles, if not Barsine herself, his mother, who possibly followed her son in the adventure of the attempt to gain his fathers throne, and finally in death.

• History and Archaeology

• Ανασκαφές (Αρχαιολογία)

Ταφικά σύνολα, Αγορά των Αιγών Ι, Αγορά των Αιγών

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