CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND
February 2015
(Photos: Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports)
soldiers to take it to the British Museum in 1915, a removal only prevented by a Bulgar attack. The recent discovery of a path carved into the Mound, as well as of 13 steps leading down from the surrounding wall, stimulated the interest of professional archaeologists. In order of discovery, they have since unearthed: (a) a huge doorway with two sphinxlike figures contained in a semi-circular recess overhead (both headless when first discovered; The head of one of the sphinxes (the “eastern sphinx”) has since been found on site, as have fragments of their wings.); (b) a first chamber with white marble floor in random mosaic form on a reddish background; (c) the next chamber guarded by two Caryatid figures – one literally “de-faced” – almost 4 metres tall on their bases;
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Also found on the floor of chamber two were two marvellous marble shields, thought to have been originally associated with the Amphipolis Lion statue, and a floor with a beautiful storytelling mosaic. This shows Persephone’s abduction by Hades, a copy of the same scene found in the Vergina tomb of Philip II, also in Greek Macedonia.
This, naturally, provides a dating frame, which is made more exact thanks to the coins and pottery found on the site: all date from the fourth to second centuries B.C.E., with some coins featuring the profile of Alexander.3 The most unhappy evidence is of breakins and looting, during which the Sphinxes were decapitated, one of the caryatids de-faced and the Lion’s shields broken off; and (d) the burial chamber. So far, the furthest-in chamber to have been opened is the tomb-vault – and, wondrously, it contained the skeleton of the presumed “owner” of the tomb, buried in a