Dateline: Babylon, 16 June 323 BC
• Members of Alexander the Great’s inner circle were taken aback upon learning today that their fallen leader had made pre-need arrangements for the exacting honey embalming process called mellification.
Postmortem, the body of the 32-year-old wunderkind sat around in stifling heat for a week until the arrival of an elite team of Chaldean embalmers this afternoon.
• “To be honest, we expected to find a real mess,” the chief embalmer was quoted as saying. “Summer in this part of the world is no picnic. But his kingly corpse was fresh as a daisy—not a solitary maggot.”
The embalmers’ painstaking operations within the palace were interrupted by sporadic violence between the infantry and cavalry units of Alexander’s army. Shouting anti-mellification slogans, the men came to blows over the merits of burial versus funeral pyre.
• Elsewhere, local dignitaries anxious to provide a flawless sendoff
are scrambling to obtain the highest-quality honey for the closely guarded process. A Babylonian businessman whose jars of liquid gold were among those chosen, was all smiles. “We used to curse the little conqueror; now we bless him. Who knows? Perhaps we’ll even get certified organic.”
The Adventures of Alexander’s Posthumous remains are an interesting topic, almost as epic as his real life journey. I wonder how much truth there is to the tales that Augustus broke Alexander’s corpses nose, or that Caligula stole his armour!
Interesting indeed!!
H Niyazi
threepipeproblem.blogspot.com
Hi Vicki, we met online at the Roman History book chat.
I like the new blog!
Gary
Vixen! Love the blog. I tweeted a link so that my followers could track Alexander’s post-mortem progress. Good luck with the new book.
HAHA! Great article, Vicki. I love the last bit about certified organic…
Wow, what happened with his body then? Wonder how much honey you need to embalm a human body- and if you can still chose which honey you’ll use… Great blog!!!
“Certified organic” I love it!
@ Niyazi, wait and see what future blog posts say about those topics!
@Gary, thank you for joining us! I hope to catch the next book chat and glad I’ve gotten on facebook finally…
@laura, thank you! hope I can learn the ropes enough to do such things in future..and hello to your followers!
@Allie, glad you enjoyed it–you’ll never feel quite the same way about honey, after this..(smile)
@Christel, I think the answer is: a lot. If you are Alex the Great, you probably get to choose the type of honey and lots besides. As you’ll learn later in this series of blog posts, some of the dead who got mellifed were wrapped in honey-laden bandages (I’m guessing because it would not require as much honey.
@librarypat: thanks, and hope you enjoy more of the story.