Philip II Greater
A lot of scholars would agree with R. A. Gabriel assigning the epithet ''Greater'' to Philip II of Macedon. Yet this is not the reason of my review of his book. There are very few historians, archaeologists and anthropologists who have dealt with King Phlip's cremains found in a gold larnax of Tomb II at the Great Tumulus of Aegae in 1977, and have spent endless debates on his identity. This was due to pure lack of material evidence, e.g,, absence of a detailed anthropological study. To site an example, the cover photo of Gabriel's unique book is from ''Making Faces'' [by J. Prag-R. Neave, Texas A&M, 1997], who had never studied the ca. 400 bones, teeth and frags of the King's cremated skeleton, unfortunately...If they had, they would have realized that there is NO osseous trauma on Philip's supraorbital orbit, a fact already stated in the very detailed publication of Xitotiris-Langenscheidt [Archaeologike Ephemeris, 1981]. This fact has been verified in a more extended four-year anthropological study by the Anthropological Research Team at the Vergina Excavation of the Aristotle U in Thessaloniki. The study was presented at the annual ''Archaeologikon Ergon in Macedonia and Thrace'' recently, and it would be a pleasure to send Mr. Gabriela a short press release re our new finds as I have the honor to head the research team. Alas I don't have his email. Please be so kind as to send it to us.
The key point to this review is this: N.G.L Hammond [Philip II of Macedon, 1997], a great scholar in Macedonian history, had suggested that the woman laying in the antechamber of Tomb II may have been the daughter of the Skythian King Ateas killed in battle against Philip in 339 BC at the age of 90. As far as I know, Gabriel is the only writer who supports this hypothesis. I guess he will be pleased to know that so does the Anthropological Research Team. A more accurate age determination of the cremated lady in the antechamber based in her pubic symphysis shows she was 32 +/- 2 years thus excluding every other wife of Philip. In addition, our paleopathological study has revealed that the Scythian lady's left tibia had an old compression fracture confirmed by CAT scans which had led to atrophy shortening and disfigurement. Ergo. The shorter left greave the gorytos, the 74 arrows, the spear and other offensive weaponry found in the antechamber belong to her, not to Philip. Hence the seventh wife/concubine of the Philip II was the anonymous Skythian princess. Period.
