29. What to Do With Alexander the Great’s Corpse Became a Huge Headache to His Successors
When Alexander the Great died unexpectedly in Babylon, in 323 BC, there was no clear-cut successor capable of taking over his empire. So his chief generals began jockeying for slices of the dead conqueror’s power and territory. In the ensuing struggle, the deceased monarch’s mortal remains became valuable chips in a deadly power game. Alexander might have been dead, 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 dynasty’s traditional burial ground. The corpse was placed in a giant coffin, that in turn 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.