ALEXANDER NOT IN AMPHIPOLIS TOMB, BUT MAYBE HIS LOVER HEPHAESTION

LOOTERS are the latest threat to the mysterious tomb found in Greece last year which turned not to hold the remains of Alexander the Great ... but which contains a male skeleton which could be that of his lover Hephaestion.

A year ago it was hailed as the biggest archaeological find of the century ... with  Greece's then prime minister proclaiming that this was "most certainly" the LOST TOMB OF ALEXANDER.

Now, amidst a cataclysmic economic collapse in Greece, archaeologists have withdrawn from the mysterious large tomb at AMPHIPOLIS in Macedonia.

"No one works here anymore. The project is frozen, like everything else in Greece," a young guard told French news agency AFP, referring to the country’s economic crisis that in addition to mass layoffs and revenue cuts, it has also hit spending on cultural projects. "We still don’t know if the country is going to run out of money."

That leaves the large tomb vulnerable to looting. Greece's economic crisis is spurring a cultural crisis too, according to an in-depth report from the National Geographic, which says desperate Greeks are resorting to looting the antiquities of their fabled homeland and selling them on the black market.

The Amphipolis Tomb is an easy target despite the fact that experts say there is no chance that Alexander the Great's bones are there if, indeed, they were ever buried there.

Instead, they held out tantalizing possibility that the MOTHER OF ALEXANDER or possibly Roxana the WIFE OF ALEXANDER or even his male lover HEPHAESTION may have been entombed there.

Analysis of the scattered remains now shows that bones found in the tomb belong to:

• One woman over 65 years old.
• Two men around 35-45 years old each, the younger of whom may have suffered fatal knife wounds.
• One infant.
• One adult person (male or female) who had been cremated.

In addition, non-human bones were found, probably those of a horse.

Archaeologists found skeletal material belonging to a man who may have been the original inhabitant in the tomb, very close to the floor. The body belonged to a man who stood at 1.60 meters in height (5 ft. 2 in.), whose bones had been shuffled by looters.

The skeletal remains and bits of wooden debris were interspersed by iron and copper nails along with ivory and glass decorative adornments for the coffin.

The discovery of skeletal remains raises almost as many questions as it answers, since wood was not thought to have been used for royal coffins in the time of Alexander the Great. Royals were cremated in Ancient Greece.

However, it could be the body of a non-royal person ... such as Alexander's lover Hephaestion.

The announcement comes weeks after the archaeologists uncovered mosaic flooring of the second chamber ... revealing the Abduction of Proserpine/Persephone by Pluto. 

The symbolism of the MOSAIC, which was discovered in the second chamber along with CARYATIDS, vastly increases the chances that this tomb houses a member of the Macedonian royal family.

Alexander sailed from Amphipolis to Asia. 

However, it is almost certain that his tomb is located in Alexandria, since people such as Julius Caesar, Hadrian and Antinous are supposed to have visited his burial site there.