Alexander the Great’s Corpse & the Greatest Heist in History

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

Alexander the Great is one of the most famous generals and empire builders in history, but the story of his death is almost as remarkable as his life. For this episode, our host and Alexander the Great superfan, Tristan Hughes, joins Dan Snow to tell the almost unbelievable tale of what happened after Alexander died. The ensuing titanic struggle for power and control over Alexander's empire involves war, body snatching, extremely slow carriage chases and a thousand soldiers being eaten alive by crocodiles in the Nile.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the Ancient on History Hit.
0:05.4	I'm Tristan Hughes your host, and in today's podcast, well I guess we could say that we
0:09.8	are delving into the history hit archive a little here.
0:13.5	Because it's myself, I am talking in this podcast, all about the aftermath of Alexander
0:18.1	the Great's death, in particular a focus on one of the most remarkable heists in the
0:23.6	whole of history, at least in the whole of ancient history.
0:26.6	And this was the hijacking of Alexander the Great's body by one of the most influential
0:32.2	figures in the aftermath of Alexander the Great's death, a man called Tolemie.
0:37.5	He would go on to create the Tolemic dynasty in Egypt which would ultimately end with
0:42.7	clear patra in 30 BC.
0:45.4	Her death, I believe, was around this time of year in 30 BC.
0:51.6	We're going to be focusing in on the hijacking.
0:53.7	We're going to be focusing in on the death of Alexander the Great.
0:57.0	And we're also going to be focusing in on the key figures of Tolemie and his arch rival,
1:02.0	the incredible figure, often overlooked, forgotten, horrific, gruesome figure that was Alexander's
1:09.4	former second in command, Perdicus.
1:12.3	And what ultimately happened to Perdicus and his army when they attempted to retrieve
1:17.0	the body from Egypt of the Tolemie hijacked it.
1:21.2	Here alert, it includes crocodiles, maybe even some hippos.
1:25.7	As I'm sure many of you are already well aware, Dan is an absolutely fantastic host.
1:30.4	It was wonderful to chat to him about this topic, so that I'll further ado, here's Dan
1:35.3	and I, talking about what I believe to be the greatest heist in history.
	...

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