The King Died - Clouds

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The King Died Today

29 Aiiaru 323 BCE

 Death of Alexander

[Year fourteen of Alexander, Month Two]
[The first part is missing.]
Night of the fourteenth, beginning of the night, the moon was [lacuna] in front of Theta Ophiuchi.
[Night of the eighteenth,] first part of the night, Mercury was fourteen fingers above Saturn.
[lacuna] crossed the sky.
The twenty-first: clouds crossed the sky.
Night of the twenty-second: clouds [crossed the sky; lacuna]
[Night of the twenty-third: lacuna] 2 2/3 cubits; clouds were in the sky.
The twenty-fourth: clouds [were in the sky].
[lacuna] clouds crossed the sky.
Night of the twenty-seventh: clouds crossed the sky.
The twenty-seventh: [lacuna]
[The night of the twenty-eighth?; lacuna] stood to the east.
The twenty-ninth: The king died. Clouds.note
[That month, the equivalent for 1 shekel of silver was: lacuna] cress, 1 sût 4 qa; sesame 3 1/2 qa.
[At that time; lacuna] Saturn was in Gemini, at the end of the month in Cancer; Mars was in Virgo.
[lacuna] the Gate of Bel [lacuna]

Tablet located in the British Museum



Alexander may have been poisoned, more probably he was killed by some fever contracted locally.  At the time of his death he was descending into Stalin style paranoia at the tender age of 32.  June 10-11, 323 BCE.
His veterans fought the ensuing Successor Wars for the next 10 years, men in their sixties and seventies chopping apart the young soldiers sent in against them.  These men, after betraying their general Eumenes in order to recover their captured wives and property, were themselves dealt with by sending them off by twos and threes on no return missions by Antigonus One-Eyed, a truly able individual.  
Eumenes was Alexander's Greek secretary, who upon promotion to general showed the Macedonians how things had been done for centuries in Greece, and he was not loved for it.  Too bad, he deserved better.  Antigonus had him killed, of course, but gave the body honorable treatment befitting Eumenes's rank and position.  The body of hardened veterans who turned Eumenes over to Antigonus were untrustworthy and paid in the same coin for their trouble.  Good riddance.


No better history has ever been written.  My copy has the pages all stuck together, oddly enough.


Alexander's helmet, an educated guess.  It looked something like this!

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