Past Perfect: Among Macedonian Kings?

As a student of classical archaeology at the University of Thessalonike, Manolis Andronicos (1919–1992) helped excavate a third-century B.C. palace in Vergina, just 50 miles away. Archaeologists had long suspected that the ruins of ancient Aigai—the capital of the Macedonian kingdom and likely burial place of King Philip II (359–336 B.C.), father of Alexander the Great—lay beneath modern Vergina. In 1952, after completing post-doctoral studies at Oxford University, Andronicos returned to Vergina, where he sunk a trench into a 40-foot-high mound dubbed the Great Tumulus. Convinced that the man-made mound concealed an important tomb, Andronicos explored the tumulus over […]