The Last Will and Testament of Alexander the Great: The Truth Behind the Death that Changed the Graeco-Persian World Forever

363 Pages·2021·19.363 MB·English

by  David Grant

The Last Will and Testament
of Alexander the Great
An Empire Left to the
Strongest
The Last Will and Testament of Alexander the Great.indd 1 6/7/2021 4:44:45 PM
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The Last Will
and Testament of
Alexander the Great
An Empire Left to
the Strongest
The Truth Behind the Death
and Succession that Changed
the Graeco-Persian World Forever
David Grant
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First published in Great Britain in 2021 by
Pen & Sword History
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
Yorkshire – Philadelphia
Copyright © David Grant 2021
ISBN 978 1 52677 126 1
The right of David Grant to be identified as Author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.
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Contents
Author’s Foreword ...........................................................................................vii
Publisher’s Note ...............................................................................................ix
A Reader’s Resource .........................................................................................xi
Chapter 1: Introducing Three Warring Witnesses ...........................................1
Chapter 2: The Portentous Prelude To Death .................................................7
Chapter 3: The Assassins’ Assembly; Path To Civil War .................................23
Chapter 4: Wills And Testaments In Classical Greece ....................................65
Chapter 5: Death And Poison: The Toxic Cup ...............................................81
Chapter 6: Hunting The Architects Of Deceipt .............................................89
Chapter 7: Royal Secretary, Royal Seal, Royal Charade .................................125
Chapter 8: How, Why And When The Will Emerged ...................................153
Chapter 9: The Overlooked Evidence ..........................................................197
Chapter 10: Epitaph In Rome, Obituary Today ..............................................225
Reference Notes..............................................................................................239
Bibliography ...................................................................................................319
Index ..............................................................................................................331
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AUTHOR’S FOREWORD
W
hen I commenced my Masters degree in ancient history in 2009 I had
no idea where it would lead. My thesis was titled ‘The Lost Last Will
and Testament of Alexander the Great’. With the encouragement
of a Greek anthropologist who read an early draft, over the next eight years I
refashioned the manuscript into a book. In that process, and through a constant
aggregation of ideas, I became more convinced of my original theory, one that
challenged the ‘standard model’ of Alexander’s death and the chaos it led to.
In 2017, In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great went to print.
It was written foremost as an academic book, with chapters arranged thematically,
like my original thesis, and it came in 917 pages long with 4,000 footnotes and a
thirty-page bibliography. I could never have guessed that The Daily Mail Online
would run an article featuring its central contention: Alexander’s will, which
appears in the popular book of fables we know as Greek Alexander Romance,
was based on a genuine, lost and deliberately hidden original succession document.
Despite that coverage, due to its ‘unacceptable’ length as well as my controversial
reinterpretation of events (so I was informed by traditional book publishers),
the title had to be self-published, and so it remained generally inaccessible
and unknown, languishing deep in the recesses of website search engines.
In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great was, however, read by
Greek researchers, who invited me to meet and discuss a possible collaboration
with many historical parallels as well as identity conundrums. From mid-2017,
I spent considerable time with them, either in person at archaeological sites or
corresponding, as part of a team of archaeologists and material scientists dedicated
to unravelling the mysteries and controversies behind the royal tombs of Macedon.
Alexander’s family was buried at the ancient city of Aegae, which was discovered
in ruins in the late 1970s beside the modern town of Vergina in northern Greece,
and I centred my research there. That collaboration resulted in my 2019 title
Unearthing the Family of Alexander the Great: the Remarkable Discovery of the
Royal Tombs of Macedon, published by the Pen & Sword History imprint. What
I learned in the process of investigating each book is that nothing related to the
members of the royal Argead line of Macedon is straightforward or what it seems.
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viii The Last Will and Testament of Alexander the Great
Their deaths in Aegae, the spiritual state capital and burial ground of its kings,
were just as inexplicable and suspiciously documented as Alexander’s in Babylon.
In the case of Alexander’s demise in the former Persian Great King’s bed,
the principal forensic curiosity has revolved around whether he was poisoned,
who may have been the culprit and what type of poison suited the symptoms.
Much scientific curiosity has gone into determining the exact time or date of
death, whether 10 or 11 June using the Babylonian astronomical diaries. Little
energy has been directed towards the possible existence of a written succession
instruction, which I more simply term a ‘will’. Consequently, every biography of
Alexander, old or new, has accepted one of the three ‘intestate’ endings which
appear in the mainstream ancient texts.
My own long-standing fascination with Alexander’s succession instructions
– or suspicious lack thereof – was sparked by a 1988 academic paper from
a pre-eminent expert on the people who feature in our sources, and it was
promisingly titled The Last Days and Testament of Alexander the Great: a
Prosopography Study.1 A ‘prosopography’ focuses on the ‘who’s who’ of the day,
and was in this case by a renowned expert on the period. But only the reissued
fake will was dissected for clues as to the author of the political document I have
come to term the ‘Pamphlet’; no original succession document was ever pondered.
With some justification, then, we could say that a ‘genuine’ will has never been the
subject of an investigation; only an assumed fabrication has come under scrutiny.
This new book, The Last Will and Testament of Alexander the Great: an
Empire Left to the Strongest, was written with the encouragement of my current
publisher. It focuses on the period from 323 BC to the end of 316 BC, from
events immediately preceding Alexander’s final entry into Babylon down to the
conclusion of what is known as the ‘Second Successor War’, and it extracts much
of the material and core contention from my 2017 title. I present it as a forensic
dissection and reinterpretation of interrelated events, rather than a straightforward
history of the period. Nothing, I stress once more, was ‘straightforward’ reporting.
I have presented the facts as clearly as possible (from decidedly conflicted
accounts) to enable as wide an audience as possible to delve into the mysterious
end of Alexander’s tale and the covert forces which kept this momentous episode of
history such a dark secret. Alexander’s death in Babylon, recorded by the mainstream
histories as a wholesale failure to nominate a successor, remains, I believe, nothing
short of the greatest succession cover-up of all time, and as misunderstand as
any event in the ancient world. Some would say, like Alexander himself.
David Grant, August 2020
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
A
useful companion to this book is David Grant’s profiling of the historians
featured in this book, to help readers better understand the agenda, bias
and influences at work on the ancient contemporary reporting of events.
It is titled Alexander the Great: A Battle for Truth and Fiction, the ancient sources
and why they can’t be trusted. Due to appear in spring 2022 under the Pen & Sword
History imprint, it also extracts much of the research from Grant’s 2017 title.
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