by Dorothy King:
... ain't over yet.
Look, they are still digging as the press release made clear, and will continue digging for a dew years, if not decades.
I'm still trying to take it easy to get over the 'flu and a fever, and get on with writing, so please don't read too much into this, but as I've replied to questions in the posts.
Based on my experience with other similar tombs, there are probably many more letter / mason's marks / mongrams / whatever you want to call them on other blocks, and if people want to pore through the photographs released I know you'll find another one.
Based on other examples, and the fact that there was a lion on a base on top of the mound, I'd bet that there was other architectural sculpture on the exterior, for example it would be highly surprising if there were not a frieze. Since the lion etc were found some way from Kasta, the archaeologists will be looking around the area.
The chambers were probably used for a cult of Alexander whilst they waited for his body to come home. The items once in there would have been removed before it was filled with soil to prevent it collapsing.
The weight of the mound should not have been enough to make the chamber collapse if there rest of the core was solid, so it is possible that there were other sets of rooms in the mound.
It is highly likely that there were other structures, whether the sarcophagi of later deceased or naiskoi to heroes and gods, around such an important tomb, and I am sure the archaeologists would have been looking for these and mapping them.
Also based on parallels with the mound at Vergina, although there won't be remains from the pyre since there wasn't one, there are likely to be painted stele and other items deposited there.
Again, this is not based on leaks. I have eyes, I've been doing this a long time, and I'm good at it.
The short version is that the empty rooms and dead end support a cenotaph and heroon for Alexander the Great, which was not reused for anyone else since doing so with such an important tomb might have seemed presumptuous.
More soon ;-)
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