The Sphinxes Guarding the Lion Tomb Entrance at Amphipolis

[Xenophon]

Gepd wrote:

Do we have examples of similar sized tombs with sealing walls (or some type of sealing) having so much soil within them that undoubtedly came from natural causes? I looked a lot, haven't found anything.

Me neither, though I haven't looked hard. Any fill in a tomb doesn't seem to get much attention, and often there is no report of whether fill was present or not!
I expect if such exist, they would be Egyptian tombs......

In any case, I would have also expected that if the roof blocks (see my previous post) were falling from several meters high, they would have caused considerable damage in the Persephone mosaic,

I think you would be surprised just how much protection a relatively thin layer of soil/sand can provide - think sandbags, which are relatively thin but stop bullets, and they aren't even compressed......

The excavators mentioned (during the November presentation at the ministry) that they recovered from within the fill wooden pallets , apparently used for the sand filling.

It would appear the evidence pendulum is definitely turning toward the fill being a man-made feature, in part if not entirely....

The photos shed yet more light on the rather poor descriptions available previously. The 'wedge' in particular is interesting. It appears to me that the sealing walls were not so much built on a layer of fill. Rather, gaps appear to have been left through the sealing wall. These would work rather in the manner of 'sluice gates' in a dam wall. If the fill pressure on one side of the wall grew over time, eventually the wall would be pushed over. By leaving gaps underneath, the fill would be forced through these 'sluices' instead, equalising the pressure on both sides of the sealing wall. If that hypothesis is correct, it testifies to some clever engineering....

[Matthew Amt]

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So, are those *floor slabs* across the top of the photo? ABOVE what looks like a door? Presumably not! Either the excavators are doing strange things, or you got some pretty wild brazil nuts there...

[agesilaos]

Those ARE floor slabs the door was found in the open trench as far as I can read, Taphoi assumed that it had been floored over but that is a reconstruction rather than how it was found, which was as shown in the drawings, It is a bit unclear in the reporting though and we can only hope that they extract their digits and clear these matters up.

On the BNE or 'granular convection'; I have to agree with Xenophon that the mechanics are still not understood, whilst disagreeing with his linguistic asides; 'negative buoyancy' is a common English term, in use at least since the sixties when the actor Kenneth Moore appeared on Parkinson (a BBC chatshow) and described how he suffered from it, but was forever being cast in naval roles which meant he had to swim with some poor stunt man holding him to the surface! 'Least worst' is different from best as it informs the reader that all the choices available are bad.

Back in bumble-bee territory just experiment; take a fairly heavy flatish object ( I used a 20mm cast white-metal casualty figure which had a nice flat base but good weight) and place irregular side down in an empty clean and dry food tub or such, then fill to about 10mm below rim with a granulated substance, I used washing powder. Tap the bottom quite gently and you will observe that the object rises in the matrix. It rises from one edge, however not like a magician's beautiful assistant. This is what we see re the doors. This also requires less energy, and increasingly less energy; if you lift a beam with one end on the floor you begin by lifting only half its weight and then, as it approaches the vertical, progressively less.

Greece has about ten earthquakes a century of a magnitude of 5 or more, each with an incremental effect. The retaining walls are subject to the same effect but being close fitting they are not subject to the same freedom of movement and the finer grains will fill small cracks without being able to lift the blocks, the structural walls and roof of the chamber do show damage which is almost certainly from seismic action, but the shocks do not have to be of the catastrophic order posited by Taphoi to move objects within the fill.

This has to remain purely an opinion, of course, until the position of the finds is actually disclosed. I suspect that there are several stages to the monument's history the original construction and burial between 323 and 250 (nothing narrows the range further and it may be later), followed by abandonment with possible relocation of the entombed following a great earthquake - a period of later re-use of the third chamber for prestige burial in late Roman times, just as is seen at the nearby hill 133(?) tomb; it must be prestigious because someone tore up the peribolos to create sealing walls and filled the tomb to stop ingress which must represent the final stage since the first wall with the sphinxes had not been breached. Third century Roman Greece is another historical gap akin to mid third century BC Macedon. One might point to the lack of grave goods yet the elaborate sealing... whatever was there entombed was never meant to escape, the so-called knife wounds to one skeleton might just as easily be a stake!

I jest, but there have been found ritually killed child corpses in tandem with dogs just outside Rome which seem to be counter evil spirit burials, probably in reaction to a malarial outbreak which the populace did not understand; that was late fourth century though. All the same the Strymon was likely malarial. Antigonid Royal Mausoleum to crepuscular Christian crypt of proto-Drakula.. anyone got the phone number of the Greek tourist board? Payment in olives and retsina gladly accepted

[gepd]

Back in bumble-bee territory just experiment; take a fairly heavy flatish object ( I used a 20mm cast white-metal casualty figure which had a nice flat base but good weight) and place irregular side down in an empty clean and dry food tub or such, then fill to about 10mm below rim with a granulated substance, I used washing powder. Tap the bottom quite gently and you will observe that the object rises in the matrix. It rises from one edge, however not like a magician's beautiful assistant. This is what we see re the doors. This also requires less energy, and increasingly less energy; if you lift a beam with one end on the floor you begin by lifting only half its weight and then, as it approaches the vertical, progressively less.

I still find this problematic. E.g. have a look at the image I put earlier (or similar ones from the time the mosaic was released.

Screenshot-7.jpg (90.56 KiB) Viewed 3782 times

The material is so compressed it has very limited fluidity - it stays in position on the two sides instead of flowing down and burying the excavator Ι have a feeling that BNE would be difficult in such a medium. Even if it is possible, the apparent selective application of BNE on certain blocks (e.g. doors) and not on others would be hard to explain.

Below is a nice graphic from a simulation of PNE. Look how the layer deformation would be an indicator for BNE:

Screenshot-1.jpg (100.38 KiB) Viewed 3782 times

Luckily, there are similar tracers of BNE in the fill of the tomb, that is layers of burning in the fill. See the image below. Quality of this screen-capture is not good, but you can see some slabs (doors? something else?) at the bottom. It is from the period that the fill of the 3rd chamber was being removed. The layering is horizontal, unlike the simulation above which shows deformation of layers around large volumes. That may be good indication that BNE did not take place.

Screenshot-3.jpg (176.21 KiB) Viewed 3782 times

[gepd]

Just in case you didn't see those, here are some new and clearer pictures of the marble doors:

1.jpg (182.2 KiB) Viewed 3710 times

2.jpg (232.06 KiB) Viewed 3710 times

9.jpg (148.02 KiB) Viewed 3710 times

[Taphoi]

There is some actual news from Greece, so we can forsake the thread on feline backsides and get back to the main business

In brief, Angeliki Kottaridi appears to have led a claim that the Amphipolis tomb dates to the 1st-2nd century BC published in the Greek newspaper, the Dawn last Sunday. This is more or less the Olga Palagia line with strong references to how the pebble mosaic just has to be Roman and how the sculpture is stylistically "Roman". It seems these existing claims were given revived news value by the visit of a group of archaeologists including Kottaridi to the tomb on 30th May. There is also a confused reference to a bag of 2nd century BC potsherds glimpsed by the group in the Amphipolis museum (but no precise provenance for it).

Katerina Peristeri (Head of the official archaeological team) has now formally contradicted Kottaridi & Co in a letter to the newspaper and has reiterated last quarter of 4th century BC. But the real news is that Peristeri is reported now to be moving the sealing event back in time by two centuries to the 2nd century BC. Previously, the official team had made allusions to a sealing event in the Roman imperial period seemingly coincident with the dismantling of part of the peribolos. Peristeri has also promised that the official data will be presented in the Autumn.

Please note that all of this is still subject to clarification and may prove to be inaccurate!

For me the interest is that the bones are now pre-Roman and therefore date to a period before inhumation superceded cremation. That makes them much less likely not to belong to the original occupants.

Best wishes,

Andrew

[agesilaos]

There is also this depressing news

http://www.greece.com/news/13996/Amphip ... thing.html

Do you have a link to your news story?

[Taphoi]

There is also this depressing news

http://www.greece.com/news/13996/Amphip ... thing.html

Do you have a link to your news story?

In English some of it is here http://news.yahoo.com/no-answers-ancien ... 55911.html, but the reporter has no idea what is important and what is not, so leaves the actual news until the end.

In Greek, some of it is here http://www.avgi.gr/article/5764280/ston ... -amfipolis There are diverse other bits and pieces filling out the whole picture.

The actual letter by Katerina Peristeri is to be found here http://www.avgi.gr/article/5767313/epis ... -peristeri Again the significant bit is at the end.

Best wishes,

Andrew

[Taphoi]

I would also like to point out that the carbon dates on the bones should be available to the official team by now. I have previously explained that the beginning of the second century BC is the boundary between the two possible ranges of carbon date. Katerina Peristeri's dating of the sealing is therefore a strong hint that the carbon dates have pointed to the earlier carbon epoch (roughly 350-180BC). This is VERY significant.

Best wishes,

Andrew

[Zebedee]

For me the interest is that the bones are now pre-Roman and therefore date to a period before inhumation superceded cremation. That makes them much less likely not to belong to the original occupants.

Problem with that leap Andrew is that yon mound is in a graveyard full of inhumations. And there's a cremation in there too (with some evidence in the vicinity of the mound for a pyre if the original excavation reports are to be believed). Would also advise caution on linking carbon dating of skeletons with a dating for the sealing. One of those things is not like the other. Wondering what she has got to specifically date the construction of the sealing walls though, and which would provide her with something other than a date before which it could not have been done.

[Taphoi]

For me the interest is that the bones are now pre-Roman and therefore date to a period before inhumation superceded cremation. That makes them much less likely not to belong to the original occupants.

Problem with that leap Andrew is that yon mound is in a graveyard full of inhumations. And there's a cremation in there too (with some evidence in the vicinity of the mound for a pyre if the original excavation reports are to be believed). Would also advise caution on linking carbon dating of skeletons with a dating for the sealing. One of those things is not like the other. Wondering what she has got to specifically date the construction of the sealing walls though, and which would provide her with something other than a date before which it could not have been done.

I have no problem with asserting that there is no way that the bones are later than the sealing.

It looks like Katerina Peristeri is linking the sealing with the Roman takeover. That happens to coincide with a stepwise increase in atmospheric radiocarbon. Everything that died in the range 350-180BC has an indistinguishably similar radiocarbon concentration today, but things that died after the Roman conquest of Macedon have a distinctly higher radiocarbon concentration. It is quite likely that it is the carbon dates themselves that are driving her sealing date (otherwise it is a big coincidence that her date is coinciding with the C-14 step change). If so, her date is only a latest sealing date and a distribution of C-14 dates for the remains between 325BC and 168BC is also what you would see if they all actually died around 315BC, because death dates in that range all give modern radiocarbon concentrations which are within the random measurement error margin of one another.

Best wishes,

Andrew

[amyntoros]

If so, her date is only a latest sealing date and a distribution of C-14 dates for the remains between 325BC and 168BC is also what you would see if they all actually died around 315BC, because death dates in that range all give modern radiocarbon concentrations which are within the random measurement error margin of one another.

Just out of curiosity, what would you see if they all actually died around 168 BC? Or 200 BC? Or ... well, you get the picture...

Best Regards,

[Zebedee]

I have no problem with asserting that there is no way that the bones are later than the sealing.

Well, no, but that's not what you said. [edit: just to be clear, this is an archaic graveyard of inhumations surrounding, and even within, the mound. The reports of various animal bones found inside may well place some of the remains in that period, and one can easily see a scenario where bones uncovered in obtaining the fill would be reburied in the main chamber. Even the size of the grave cut into the floor seems to imply that an inhumation of someone was intended, at least at some stage, but how then does one explain the cremation being present? Nothing is narrowed down by the comments beyond the date of the sealing, but then the idea it is a Roman period tomb seemed ill-thought out to begin with.]

It looks like Katerina Peristeri is linking the sealing with the Roman takeover. That happens to coincide with a stepwise increase in atmospheric radiocarbon. Everything that died in the range 350-180BC has an indistinguishably similar radiocarbon concentration today, but things that died after the Roman conquest of Macedon have a distinctly higher radiocarbon concentration. It is quite likely that it is the carbon dates themselves that are driving her sealing date (otherwise it is a big coincidence that her date is coinciding with the C-14 step change). If so, her date is only a latest sealing date and a distribution of C-14 dates for the remains between 325BC and 168BC is also what you would see if they all actually died around 315BC, because death dates in that range all give modern radiocarbon concentrations which are within the random measurement error margin of one another.

Well, yes but no. You're confusing 'indistinguishable' with degrees of probability. A 95% probability of being within 200 years is one thing, a 68% probability of being within 150 years another. And, again, the dating of the remains inside will not provide a dating for the sealing. The two (at least) things have to be treated as discrete events, unless Peristeri is making rather large brain booboos.

[Taphoi]

If so, her date is only a latest sealing date and a distribution of C-14 dates for the remains between 325BC and 168BC is also what you would see if they all actually died around 315BC, because death dates in that range all give modern radiocarbon concentrations which are within the random measurement error margin of one another.

Just out of curiosity, what would you see if they all actually died around 168 BC? Or 200 BC? Or ... well, you get the picture...

Best Regards,

Good question! At 200BC you would see almost exactly the same C-14 distribution as at 315BC or 325BC-180BC. By 168BC you should get at least some (and maybe all) results with more radiocarbon than is statistically consistent wth 325BC-180BC. There is a fairly sharp transition around the second quarter of the 2nd century BC. There are charts for this. Might add one later. No time now.

Best wishes,

Andrew

[agesilaos]

Since there is no mention of any C14 dating in the articles or letter cited I presume that

I would also like to point out that the carbon dates on the bones should be available to the official team by now. I have previously explained that the beginning of the second century BC is the boundary between the two possible ranges of carbon date. Katerina Peristeri's dating of the sealing is therefore a strong hint that the carbon dates have pointed to the earlier carbon epoch (roughly 350-180BC). This is VERY significant.

Is your speculation entirely, and would suggest its only significance is its total insignificance; speculation based on artefacts or sources is fair enough but on pseudo-Holmesian deduction, mmmh? Good to see you are preparing your defence of a later C14 date, where is the research demonstrating this step change?