“Amore e morte nella famiglia reale macedone. Alla ricerca di Filippo II”

Where is buried Philip II king of Macedonia? To whom may we attribute the skeletal remains from the Tombs I and II at Vergina? These are the questions at the very core of a long, harsh and perhaps never-ending debate that began right after the discovery of the tombs of Vergina in 1977. A controversy involving scholars from various disciplines through the production of a vast bibliography. Andronikos, the discoverer of the site, claimed indeed that the Tomb II belonged to Philip II and his young wife Cleopatra; subsequently other hypotheses were put forward, among the others, the suggestion that the woman buried with Philip II is the Thracian princess Meda. Some authors indicate Philip III and his wife Euridyce as the true occupants of the tomb. Very recently this scenario was complicated by a renovated attention toward the Tomb I and the proposal that its occupants might be the best candidate as Philip II and Cleopatra. Here we present a reconsideration of the historical, archaeological, anthropological evidence published so far, showing some severe pitfalls in the interpretation and concluding that the issue of the identification of the occupants of the Tombs I and I at Vergina is still far from being resolved.