20. The Founder of this Dynasty Hijacked Alexander the Great’s Corpse
Alexander the Great met his end unexpectedly in Babylon, in 323 BC, and there was no clear successor who could take over his massive empire. So his chief generals began to jockey for slices of the dead conqueror’s power and territory, and each vied to carve out his own realm and found his own dynasty. In the resultant struggle, the deceased monarch’s mortal remains became valuable chips in a deadly power game. Alexander might have shuffled off the mortal coil, but in the political context of the time, his corpse was a valuable item. Burying a king was a royal prerogative, so possession of King Alexander’s body symbolized legitimacy.
As a result, the corpse stayed in Babylon for over a year, while people figured out what to do with it. Alexander, who came to believe that he was the son of the god Ammon, had wanted to be buried in the Temple of Zeus-Ammon in the Egyptian desert. That was unacceptable to Alexander’s generals, who eventually decided to send his body to the traditional royal burial ground in Macedon. The corpse was placed in a giant coffin, that was placed in a ginormous funerary carriage and sent on a stately procession from Babylon to Macedon. However, Alexander never made it back home: his corpse got hijacked along the way.
