Archaeologists Find Possible Male Lover of Alexander the Great

Casta Hill near Amphipolis in northern Greece, where archaeologists are excavating a large 4th century B.C. tomb.  (Source:AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

The bones of an honored person, rumored to possibly be Hephaestion, Alexander the Great's close friend and possible lover, were found in a tomb in Amphipolis in Northern Greece.

Discovery News reports at least one archaeologist on a team led by Katerina Peristeri found the human remains in a box-shaped grave. The 10.6 by 5.1-foot limestone burial was found about 5.3 feet beneath the floor of the third chamber in the huge tomb site.

Within the grave, they unearthed the remains of a wooden coffin with iron and copper nails, and bone and glass fragments they believe were decorative elements of the coffin.

"Parts of the skeleton were found scattered within and outside of the grace. Obviously, an anthropological investigation will be carried on the remains," said the Greek Ministry of Culture in a statement.

Dorothy King, an archeologist not involved in the excavation, said that because the bones were found both in and around the sarcophagus, that the tomb was looted. But she said that the fact that a body was buried indicates that it was someone important.

"A burial like this in a sarcophagus, a whole body rather than a box with ashes, is unusual in Macedonia," said King, who noted that only the most important people like Alexander or possibly his lover Hephaestion, would be embalmed like this.

"If the bones are male, they are most likely to be those of someone like Hephaestion," wrote King in herblog. "The remains show that the sarcophagus was very elaborate and made of precious materials, as the sources say his funerary cortege was."

When Hephaestion died in Western Iran in October 324 B.C., Alexander reportedly mourned by shaving his hair, refusing to eat, executing Hephaestion's doctor, and commissioning the expensive funeral pure. Alexander the Great died eight months later.

World's earliest erotic graffiti found in unlikely setting on Aegean island

Wild, windswept, rocky and remote, Astypalaia is not an obvious place for the unearthing of some of the world's earliest erotic graffiti.

Certainly, Dr Andreas Vlachopoulos, a specialist in prehistoric archaeology, didn't think so when he began fieldwork on the Aegean island four years ago. Until he chanced upon a couple of racy inscriptions and large phalluses carved into Astypalaia's rocky peninsula at Vathy. The inscriptions, both dating to the fifth and sixth centuries BC, were "so monumental in scale" – and so tantalisingly clear – he was left in no doubt of the motivation behind the artworks.

"They were what I would call triumphant inscriptions," said the Princeton-trained professor who found them while introducing students to the ancient island world of the Aegean. "They claimed their own space in large letters that not only expressed sexual desire but talked about the act of sex itself," he told the Guardian. "And that is very, very rare."

Chiselled into the outcrops of dolomite limestone that dot the cape, the inscriptions have provided invaluable insight into the private lives of those who inhabited archaic and classical Greece. One, believed to have been carved in the mid-sixth century BC, proclaimed: "Nikasitimos was here mounting Timiona (Νικασίτιμος οἶφε Τιμίονα).

Amazing Archaeological Discoveries from Critter Diggers

Fieldwork can be uncomfortable for long-legged humans, but burrowing animals are built for digging. Furry creatures have provided invaluable assists at two different European sites. In northern Germany, a badger discovered nine remarkable 900-year-old burials, including that of a richly outfitted warrior. “There was no knowledge of these graves and no reason to investigate without the badger’s assistance,” says archaeologist Felix Biermann, who continues to dig the site. In Cumbria, England, burrowing moles have pushed up ancient objects at second-century Whitley Castle, uncovering invaluable evidence of Roman life at the fort. There have only been two previous digs, and Whitley Castle is now a protected site that human archaeologists can never explore. And not to be outdone by their terrestrial counterparts, specially trained mine-hunting dolphins discovered a nineteenth-century Howell torpedo off the coast of San Diego. Only 50 Howells were made, and only two had previously been found.