Tea at Trianon: Where Is the Tomb of Alexander the Great?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Where Is the Tomb of Alexander the Great?

From The Collector:

When Ptolemy stole Alexander’s body, Alexandria was still being constructed, and Ptolemy was ruling from Memphis, where Alexander was placed inside a temporary tomb. In the 19th century, archaeologists located a temple of the Pharaoh Nectanebo II near the Serapeum of Saqqara. He was the last native pharaoh of Egypt, who vanished after the Persian invasion in 340 BCE. Archaeologists have proposed that this temple of Nectanebo was repurposed as Alexander’s temporary tomb.

Located near Ptolemy’s seat of power, the temple would only have been a few decades old when Ptolemy was searching for a burial place, and it was probably the most recent major non-Persian monument in Egypt. There was also an unused royal sarcophagus prepared for Nectanebo II, perfect for a king. The discovery of statues dating from Ptolemy I’s reign in the vicinity of the temple confirms that some royal attention was paid to this site at this time.

Interestingly, an apocryphal ancient story claimed that Nectanebo fled to Macedon and was Alexander’s true father. Alexander was already born before Nectanebo fled Egypt, but the story might have emerged because of Alexander’s burial in the former’s tomb. (Read more.)