06-17-2004, 03:58 PM
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#1
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Contributor
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Los Angeles area
Posts: 40,549
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Who's buried in St. Mark's tomb? Alexander the Great??
Does the tomb of St Mark in Venice really contain the bones of Alexander the Great?
Quote:
The mummified remains buried beneath the altar of St Mark's Basilica in fact belong to Alexander the Great, according to Andrew Chugg, a respected authority on the Macedonian conqueror.
His theory, a complex tale of medieval body-snatching, is already dividing the academic world. This week he will cause outrage among devout Catholics when, writing in the latest edition ofHistory Today, he says the saintly relics should be exhumed and subjected to genetic testing.
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Alexander died aged 32 or 33, according to some authorities, and for 700 years his corpse lay entombed in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, which he founded. Yet, by the 4th century AD it had vanished.
Mr Chugg, the author of several books on Alexander, believes the confusion occurred when the warrior's body was disguised as St Mark to protect it from destruction during a Christian uprising.
"Both bodies were said to be mummified in linen, and one seems to disappear at the same time that the other appears - in almost exactly the same place, near the central crossroads of Alexandria," he writes. "It's a strong possibility that somebody in the Church hierarchy, perhaps even the Patriarch himself, decided it might be a good plan to pretend the remains of Alexander were those of St Mark.
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