Body of St. Mark may actually be Alexander the Great

So I recently stumbled upon this website: http://www.alexanderstomb.com/ . To summarize the site for those who don't want to go stumble around there, this historian and achaeologist, Andrew Chugg, has reason to believe that historians and archaeologists have missed a few things when looking for the tomb of Alexander and that the local Alexandrian story that it is under the Mosque of Daniel in Alexandria (which can't be confirmed since they won't allow excavation under the holy site) is actually false and that it was made up after the stone sarcophagus of Alexander was moved by the British to London in 1802. His mummified remains were not in the sarcophagus, and it had been found about 5 years earlier by Napoleon empty, and appeared to have been empty for quite some time. It being Alexander the Great here, and Napoleon being who he was, I don't think he would have lied about that.

So having gone over the surviving ancient sources on Alexander's tomb, the location of his body and the history of Alexandria, Chugg has come to the conclusion that it may have become misidentified by the time Muslim forces took over Alexandria from the Christians and that they may have by that time started venerating the remains as the remains of St. Mark, the founder of Christianity in Alexandria, much as Alexander's remains had been venerated by the pagans as the founder of Alexandria itself. In the earliest records of the death of St. Mark, he was said to have been martyred and his remains burned. Later records say that a miracle occurred and that his remains were spared from the flames and protected by his Christian followers. In 828 CE, the remains officially identified (though not scientifically identified) as those of St. Mark were smuggled out of Alexandria by Venetian tradesmen when the Arabs took the city and taken to Venice where they were housed and continue to be housed in the Basilica of St. Mark (or San Marco). I shudder to think of Alexander's remains in a city so wet and prone to flooding, not that Alexandria, Egypt was much better, but supposedly they have been moved, as flooding has grown worse in recent years, to a part of the church safe from flooding.

Now, as of July 2005, the Vatican is still refusing Mr. Chugg's requests for an investigation of St. Mark's remains to determine their date of origin, cause of death, and, in fact, if they are not the remains of St. Mark, but rather the remains of Alexander the Great... At which time, I hope they are removed to a safer, drier, more stable location. One can well imagine all the reasons why the Vatican would not want that to be proven. Mr. Chugg has information on his site about how you can help his cause to get permission from the Vatican under "St. Mark Testing."

distant priority #5...

I need to find a good unabridged translation of The Iliad and other Trojan Cycle stories... There is always the MIT Classics Index, but... Well, just click it at right and see - it goes down all the time! There's no reliability.

I'm working on adapting the Trojan Cycle for the screen and I need to be able to makes notes in the margins and whatnot. I actually should probably get several translations done by different people since I can't read ancient Greek and have no time to learn at the moment. See, I'd like to eventually see an historically accurate, unbiased or colored by modern eyes, and complete dramatization of the great Greek epics done. And since no one else seems capable or willing, I think it will have to be me who writes the script. I'm suspicious of everything "historical" that Hollywood does after this last year of stunning disasters ("Troy," "Alexander," "Kingdom of Heaven" ::shudders::), not to mention the year before - "King Arthur" (gag me!). I'm thinking that they shouldn't be allowed to do period films anymore without adult supervision. Although, they could turn things around if "The New World" and "Beowulf & Grendel" live up to expectations... but I'm not really holding my breath.

I started making notes the other day. The Fates will be the Chorus. I think that's appropriate, since they are a neutral force in the Trojan War and Fate is a major theme in all of the Greek epics I'll be dealing with... I want to go at least from the marriage of Achilles' parents through the epilogue of the Iliad, if not the back-story to it all (Zeus' affair with Leda and Hecuba's dream) through the epilogue of the Odyssey... I'm not fond of Odysseus, despite the fact that the reader is supposed to like him. Unlike Athena, I do not find his manipulations and machinations "cute." I think he's jerkier than most ancient Greek men, and I'd just as soon not rehash his story of personal discovery ::rolls eyes::. I realize that everything he did was culturally acceptable and even expected because nearly all ancient Greek men were chauvinist pigs, but I've got to draw a line somewhere. And well, even if I can grit my teeth and bear his wife remaining completely faithful to his memory while he's gallivanting across the Aegean like a 10th century BCE Lothario because he *does* love her so much that not even goddesses dangling immortality in front of his face and terrible monsters can keep him from her in the end, he crosses it one too many times with getting Iphigenia "sacrificed" by trying to incite a riot. In any case, this would obviously have to be a mini-series.