Bettany Hughes - Bulgaria

[Alexias]

The latest episode of Bettany Hughes' 'Treasure of the World' concentrated on Bulgaria ie the Thracians, and it was most interesting.

I confess I have tended to regard the Thracians in the same way the Greeks seem to have regarded them - as barbarians - meaning with the modern connotation of uncivilised, and that Philip and Alexander conquered them to keep unruly and savage neighbours in check. And the gold helped as well. I was aware of the fabulous gold work from Bulgaria, but I had not come across before the gold currently in the Varna Archaeological Museum, the oldest worked gold in the world dating to 6,500 year ago. There is an article on the gold here https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/o ... -years-ago.

Bettany also visited the tomb of Seuthes III, who died around 300 BC. The tomb looks awfully like a small Mycenaean beehive tomb, sealed with marble doors like the Macedonian ones at Vergina. It contained an amazing head of Seuthes III, and impressive goldwork. She also visited the Kazanlak tomb, with wonderful 'original' (to quote Bettany) artwork. Both these sites can be seen here https://kazanlakmuseum.com/en/?cid=31.

Very interesting as well was a visit to a young bride whose face was painted white and sequins applied, reminiscent of this female head from Mycenae https://www.alamy.com/woman-possibly-a- ... archtype=0.

If you get a chance to watch this episode, it is the best one for quite a while. A Bulgarian woman came up to Bettany and said she had seen all her programmes so other non-UK networks are presumably showing these shows. A word of caution though about Bettany's generalisations - people didn't just come out of caves 6,500 years ago and start producing gold artifacts.

[Alexias]

Apparently tonight's episode (7 pm Channel 4) features the "birthplace of Alexander the Great" Aigai, to see artifacts that are being restored. Should be worth seeing.

[Alexias]

Visually this was very interesting, although a bit misleading in places. For example, Bettany was walking through one of the large rooms off the central courtyard at Aigai, but gave the impression that it was the courtyard itself, which could house 4,000 people. There was also a large drainage channel shown, into which a bathing pool emptied. This occasioned a flight of fancy that Alexander and his teenage friends (implication being that they were being educated here) would have been bathing in the pool after exercising. Maybe, but that wasn't the principal purpose of the drain (far too big for emptying a bath) as it looked to be for diverting winter rain and snow runoff away from the palace.

A statue of Eurydike, Philip's mother, was also shown and the family resemblance with Philip and Alexander was noticeable. There was also a visit to the tomb that is generally known as Eurydike's - the one with the marble throne. However, the Greek archaeologist (I didn't catch her name unfortunately) seems to have attributed it to Thessalonike, Cassander's wife. But who would have buried her in such spectacular fashion when one of her two surviving sons was involved in her murder, and the other was possibly underage?

Anyway, we were also told that Queen Meda, Philip's sixth wife, threw herself on Philip's funeral pyre. And the evidence for this? Not given.

I may have to stop watching Bettany Hughes' programmes as I am beginning to find her socialist and feminist slant on history misleading. There are also too many sweeping statements that at the least are debatable, but I won't bother going into any of this as it is merely my personal view.

[Jeanne Reames]

I've been to Bulgaria and seen both the tombs and the Thracians goods in museums, especially Kazanlak, Plovdiv, and Sofia. Absolutely stunning stuff. And the first thing that strikes one is the parallels to what we're seeing in Macedonia, in both goods and tomb type, although tombs such as Seuthes' is after Alexander. Yes, it's sort of Mycenaean, but the connections to Macedonia are stronger, especially once you see the grave goods too. There are differences. Bodies are not buried in these tombs; they're cenotaphs, having to do with burial beliefs. The bodies were cut into 7 pieces and buried anonymously. Also, several of these tombs are "retired" shrines. Like vaulted Macedonian tombs, each is unique, even if they share obvious similarities. Anyway, as noted, there's a lot of shared culture between Eastern/Lowland Macedonia and Thrace, but in burial goods and also the prominence of deities such as Dionysos and The Rider.

Recent archaeology out of northern Greece, as well as ancient Thrace and Illyria is demonstrating that the Greek take on the "barbarism" of these people well back into the Late Iron Age (Archaic Era) is more political/philosophic fiction than reality, and later Roman Second Sophistic takes only emphasized the fiction further. This is where I love how archaeology can catch our textual evidence in an obvious lie. Ha.

[marcus]

Anyway, we were also told that Queen Meda, Philip's sixth wife, threw herself on Philip's funeral pyre. And the evidence for this? Not given.

A quick look around on t'Internet says that the theory that Meda slew herself came from NGL Hammond. I will do some more digging to find out where he said this, and what his source/evidence for it is.

[marcus]

Anyway, we were also told that Queen Meda, Philip's sixth wife, threw herself on Philip's funeral pyre. And the evidence for this? Not given.

A quick look around on t'Internet says that the theory that Meda slew herself came from NGL Hammond. I will do some more digging to find out where he said this, and what his source/evidence for it is.

Hammond put this theory forward in 'Philip of Macedon' (1994), p.182. The female occupant of Tomb II at Aegae was "equipped for war or for hunting in the afterlife", including a quiver, which Hammond takes to suggest that the woman was Thracian. Her age was c.25. He therefore could not explain why a Thracian woman of 25 could be buried with Philip (he assumes that the male in Tomb II was indeed Philip II) unless it were Meda.

Heckel thinks it implausible, because Thracian widow-suicides were by strangulation rather than cremation (re. Hdt 4.71.4).

In other words, there is no evidence that Meda threw herself on Philip's funeral pyre, merely a theory based on very shaky peripheral evidence and a number of Occam-razor-like assumptions.