RT by @mikenov: In 321 BC, the general Ptolemy I Soter hijacked Alexander the Great’s extravagant funeral procession in Syria, diverting his body to Egypt to legitimize his own rule and spark the First War of the Successors… Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 BC without a clear heir. His imperial regent, Perdiccas, wanted to transport Alexander’s body back to Macedonia to bury him with his royal ancestors at Aegae, which would cement Perdiccas’s supreme power over the empire. It took two years to build a massive, gold-adorned funeral carriage pulled by 64 mules draped in golden bells and jeweled collars. . . . As the dead king rode home on a golden carriage drawn by sixty-four mule

In 321 BC, the general Ptolemy I Soter hijacked Alexander the Great’s extravagant funeral procession in Syria, diverting his body to Egypt to legitimize his own rule and spark the First War of the Successors…

Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 BC without a clear heir. His imperial regent, Perdiccas, wanted to transport Alexander’s body back to Macedonia to bury him with his royal ancestors at Aegae, which would cement Perdiccas’s supreme power over the empire. It took two years to build a massive, gold-adorned funeral carriage pulled by 64 mules draped in golden bells and jeweled collars.

. . .

As the dead king rode home on a golden carriage drawn by sixty-four mules, each wearing a gilded crown and two gold bells.

Ptolemy conspired with Arrhidaeus (general commanding the cortege) to intercept the slow-moving convoy as it traveled through the Levant/Syria. When Perdiccas found out and sent a light-armed task force to chase them down, Ptolemy met the procession near Damascus with a heavily armed mercenary army to block Perdiccas and claim the body.

. . .

Ptolemy was waiting in Egypt.

He had grown up at court beside Alexander, and as a young man he had been sent into exile for taking the prince’s side in a quarrel with his father.

Now he governed Egypt, and he saw something the other generals were slow to see, that whoever buried Alexander would look like his heir.

A seer named Aristander had already declared that the land which received the body would be happy and never conquered.

When the carriage reached Syria in 321 BC, Ptolemy met it with an army and turned it south.

Perdiccas, the regent who held the dead king’s signet ring, sent men after it.

The writer Aelian later told what happened next.

Ptolemy, he said, laid a lifelike figure dressed in Alexander’s royal robes on a couch of silver, gold, and ivory, and let the pursuers find it while the real body went on secretly toward Egypt.

Perdiccas seized the figure and called off the chase.

Ptolemy successfully brought Alexander’s body to Egypt—first interring it in Memphis and later moving it to a grand tomb in Alexandria. Possessing the conqueror’s corpse gave Ptolemy the divine legitimacy needed to establish the 300-year Ptolemaic dynasty and triggered open war among the generals.

He did not learn the truth until it was too late to catch anyone.

Alexander had asked to rest at the desert oracle of Zeus Ammon, but Ptolemy buried him at Memphis instead.

#archaeohistories

— @archeohistories Nov 1, 2026