Unprecedented Miniature Carving of Alexander the Great Found

by Nissan Ratzlav-Kat

(IsraelNN.com) Excavations in Tel Dor have turned up a rare and unexpected work of Hellenistic art: a precious stone bearing the miniature carved likeness of Alexander the Great. Archaeologists are calling it an important find, indicating the great skill of the artist.

The Tel Dor dig, under the guidance and direction of Dr. Ayelet Gilboa of Haifa University and Dr. Ilan Sharon of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, has just ended its summer excavation season. For more than 30 years, scientists have been excavating in Tel Dor, identified as the site of the Biblical town of Dor. The town's location, on Israel's Mediterranean Sea coast some 30 kilometers south of Haifa, made it an important international port in ancient times.

"Despite the tiny proportions - the length of the gemstone (gemma) is less than a centimeter and its width less than half a centimeter - the artist was able to carve the image of Alexander of Macedon with all of his features," Dr. Gilboa said. "The king appears as young and energetic, with a sharp chin and straight nose, and with long, curly hair held in a crown."

According to the archaeologists involved in the Tel Dor excavations, the discovery of the miniature Alexander gemstone carving in Israel is fairly surprising. The Land of Israel was not, for the Greek Empire, a central or major holding.

"It has been accepted to assume that first-rate artists - and whoever carved the image of Alexander in this gemstone was certainly one of them - were primarily active under the patronage of the large royal courts in Greece itself or in major capitals," the scientists explained. "It turns out that local elites in secondary centers such as Dor could allow themselves - and knew to appreciate - superior artwork."

Additionally, the new find is important for the study of the historical Alexander the Great. The gemstone was found in the remains of a large public building from the Hellenistic period in the southern area of the tel. Unlike most of the portraits of Alexander in museums throughout the world, with unknown origins, the Tel Dor carving was found and classified within its archaeological context. The face was definitively identified as that of Alexander the Great by Dr. Jessica Nitschke of Georgetown University and Professor Andrew Stewart of UC Berkeley.

Historically, Alexander himself passed through Dor in 332 BCE, during his voyage to Egypt. It appears that the city fell to him without resistance. Since that time until its conquest by the Hasmonean Jewish King Alexander Yannai around 100 BCE, Dor served as a stronghold of non-Jewish Hellenists in the Land of Israel.


source:israelnationalnews.com

FYROM’s new Stadium: When Nationalism and Absurdity Meet!!

Sometimes, you really just have to sit back and laugh at the Ultra-Nationalistic Propaganda Campaign initiated by FYROM’s regime. In their case, History has been the tragic victim and sadly, it looks like it will be forever burdened by the propensity of the political class to stir the Slavic element of FYROM into a level of mass hysteria. Nomatter the fact that fabrications form the basis of this *unique* version of “History”.

In such cases, its also possible this level of Nationalistic Hysteria to inflate into Absurdity. But the hysteria surrounding FYROM has nowhere to go. It is already Absurd!!!

Yesterday, i had the laugh of my life while watching Photographs of the way that the FYROM’s new Stadium will look like. The Photographs were published by the newspaper “Proto Thema” in a very interesting article of Panagiotis Savvidis and certainly worth taking a look.


Photos from the newspaper “Proto Thema”

In the photos you will witness yourselves, models depicting…. ancient Greek heroes like Alexander the Great, his father Philip II of Macedonia, ancient Macedonian soldiers, lions and all these inside a.. Football Stadium!!!

Imagine what would have happened if Athens had built a new Football Stadium full of… statues from Pericles, Themistocles or Egypt to build a Soccer Stadium with Pharaohs guarding it. But as absurd, as utterly outlandish this sounds, FYROM’s officials plan exactly to materialize this cretinism.

Thankfully, there are still a few concerned citizens of FYROM who have grown wiser to their State’s proclivity for obscene propaganda and raise their voices against the varrying decrees of mass manipulation. Afterall this sad situation belittles their country, their own compatriots and of course themselves in the eyes of the rest of the world.

But in essense, that’s how the Slavic element has been degenerated into that country: Petrified and buying whatever foolishness their state-sponsored propaganda invents . So maybe we should just sit back and ask that the last intelligent person in that place to turn off the lights when he or she leaves!!

By Ptolemy

http://www.macedonian.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=10445

A Protest Regarding Your Newspaper Article ""Once around the bloc"‏

Dear Editor,

Please receive my praise for the quality evidenced by the overall content your newspaper delivers, manifested through expression of a broad-themed subjects, with a wide-ranging repertoire of articles . This is an impression evidenced instantly from your website and my guess is that it is reflected in its printed edition as well.

However, I have a remark over article by one of your authors, which contains a gross factual error, which has a multitude of connotations, all of them creating misleading impressions among, I believe, high number of your readers. My intention is to inform you about these errors in combination with arguments to the contrary and with the reminder of the implications the present article has, in light with the moral objectives of contemporary journalism to deliver fact-based and solid judgement founded reporting.

The subject of my critical comment is the following article:

“Once around the bloc” by Steve McKenna, from August 16, 2009, seen on website of “The Age”, retrieved at August 22, 2009, at this URL:

http://www. theage. com. au/travel/once-around-the-bloc-20090813-ejwb. html.

While the article itself appears to be a bona fide brief insight into the quality of landscape of Balkan countries, seen primarily with prospective tourist in mind, characterised by eloquent and vivid, image-evoking language - its strong point, the section entitled “Best for idling: Macedonia” contains many errors, some of them extreme.

The very title of the section, which contains the word “Macedonia” (a name in current usage which is from combined findings of history [including historical geography], linguistics and ethnology situated as modern-day northern Greek province) is misleading. Macedonia's Greekness in historic and present perspective is furthermore sanctioned by its Greek population, most of which shares a historically - attested lineage with the Macedonians of antiquity ( a Greek entity like their contemporaries: Athenians, Spartans, Thebans, Epirotes, Milesians etc).

The title of the article under dispute evidently refers to the country known internally by its Slavic name “Republika Makedonija” (“Republic of Macedonia”) and which is known in UN, NATO, many other relevant international bodies as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), including a large number of countries which recognised its under the later name. The provisional name FYROM came as a result of internationally mediated agreement involving FYROM and the Hellenic Republic (Greece). Greece protests usurpation of its heritage and territorial aspiration of the FYRO Macedonia, augmented by a decades long history of official as well as strongly embedded in the mentality of FYROMian Slavic inhabitants irredentism – a demand for annexation of Northern Greece.

This strategic aim of plenty of individuals and circles in FYROM and its Slavic diaspora, a large number of which are Australian citizens of a self-styled “Macedonian” ethnicity, unknown before it was created by systematic imposition of propaganda by the top officials of Communist Yugoslavia, is very prevalent and very persisting phenomena. By referring to FYROM plainly as “Macedonia” the author applied a grave misnomer which is in defiance with the standards of good and ethical reporting.

However, the opening segment of the article – quote: “That great Macedonian, Alexander the Great, would be turning in his grave if he saw what remained of his homeland's capital today; Skopje is one of Europe's greyest and most uninspiring cities. ” is a flagrant example of a poorly researched subject, journalism at its worst, containing a very grave error. Alexander the Great, the Macedonian Greek conqueror and Emperor, was born in Pella, a place in Macedonia, Greece, which exist today, in 356 BCE. Pella is located c. 26 Miles south of the FYROMian border, the FYROM being a political entity unknown before 1944 and which never included the area of Pella (regardless of the fantasies of some Slavic ultra-nationalists, invigorated by the ludicrous idea of their “Macedonian” ethnic affinity universally rejected by scholarship).

Alexander, the patron, benefactor and initiator of the Hellenistic epoch, as it is well known, died in Babylon in 323 BCE and as history testifies he has no known substantial relationship with the region of today's FYROM (whose southernmost part includes some areas which were historically Macedonian-Greek, this fact bearing no confirmation to the extraordinary presentation of present-day FYROM as “Alexander's homeland”).

Today, mainstream scholarship agrees that Ancient Macedonians, whose state formation, with all variations of its borders throughout history coincides roughly with modern-day Northern Greece, were a Greek entity, distinguished chiefly politically, in the variety of kingdoms and city-states which compromised the ethnic, historical Greece. The evidence brought to such conclusion comes from the testimonies of Macedonians themselves, other Greeks, Persian, Roman, Jewish and other authors recorded by history. The enormous wealth of Ancient Macedonian inscriptions is exclusively in Greek, with no indication that from their inception as a group of people they used other language. Most of the geographical names of Ancient Macedonia, including its very name, derived from its people are Greek, with exception of few Old Balkan names (which are certainly not related to Slavic). Furthermore, the Macedonian private names are all exclusively Greek – with a meaning in Greek and conforming to the laws of Greek language - and are equivalent to private names used by the Greeks outside their region. Their religion was a cult to Olympian gods, the Mt. Olympus being in Macedonia.

This brief introduction to who Macedonians were in Classical Antiquity, to which the fact should be added that in subsequent ages, despite all the turbulences, Macedonian Greeks remained up to present day the foundation of the Greek population in Northern Greece, should in itself exclude any relation to the political entity of FYROM. The latter was created after World War II, with a bulk of population of being Slavs renamed “Macedonians” in pursuit of Yugoslav Communist agenda of occupation of Northern Greece. Historically, the Slavic population (akin to modern day Poles, Slovenians, Russians and most closely resembling the neighbouring Bulgarians, from whose branch in their land they were suddenly transformed into Macedonians) which settled the area of FYROM (known in ancient times as Paeonia) by migration and conquest from the areas around Northern Ukraine in medieval times never called itself “Macedonian”, its language “Macedonian” nor some of its state formation “Macedonia” prior to 20th century. All records, originating from domestic individuals and those from outside observers for century called the Slavic population “Bulgarian” and on some occasions, part of it was called “Serbian”. This is how the “Macedonians” of FYROM viewed themselves until quite recently (a number of them still do).

Recapitulating that the Macedonians were and are Greeks, that Alexander the Great was a Greek from a Greek environment and that axiomatically he cannot be related to a country chiefly populated by Non-Macedonians, Non-Greeks, whose history starts from 1944, it is hard, indeed astonishing that your journalist could bring forward a conclusion that FYROM being Alexander's homeland constitutes a reality. This would imply ties of language, culture, ethnicity and above all historical and political continuity, which are absent between Alexander and a country with unrelated ethnic group formed over 22 centuries after his death. As for Skopje (I acknowledge author's impression of the city, once a capital of non-Macedonian ancient entity of Dardania and a capital city of medieval Serbia) being an unattractive city, characterised with irregularly, dysfunctionally and aesthetically all-prevalent soc-realistic architecture, with poor cultural life), in light of the aforementioned it needs no further emphasis that its was not Alexander's “homeland's capital”, being outside his Macedonia in every sense of the word.

Such claims, as that found on the pages of your publication, not rarely serve as a fuel to the extreme chauvinism of the nouveaux “Macedonians”, infusing in them a sense of (fake) confirmation by the mainstream media of the idea that their nationalism-based expansionist ideas incorporating brazen attempt of absorption of the cultural legacy of Northern Greeks is something true and on the margin, such statements create a potentially sympathetic audience to their proclaimed sinister goals. Many of these “Macedonians” of Slavic type and Bulgarian ancestry live as citizens or have other resident status within Australia, which is often one of the theaters, other than their homeland of FYROM, where the fanatical ultranationalism based on history and ethno-racial suprematism is living and escalating reality.
At this point I categorically affirm that I have no reason to believe that regardless of this flaw of their non-authentic ethnic orientation, by far the most of them, as individuals, are solid, law-abiding, productive citizens of Australia integrated into their homeland and with a history of positive contributions in various forms of country's elaborated and diverse cultural, scientific, economic and other fields of endeavour. But articles like the one in your publication, no matter the light-hearted, casual-worded approach of the author do little to ameliorate the tide of confusion about certain realities.

Letting aside few other, far less important errors: pretentious naming of the town of Ohrid as “Macedonian Jerusalem”, which is a recently coined term by local nationalists, regardless of the towns historical role as a medieval Slavic (Bulgarian) cultural centre and later a core of the Greek-led ecclesiastical denomination within the Orthodox Christian world (including taking the legend of “365 Churches” as a fact), I am of opinion that sound research would produce a better article devoid of such , mildly said, inaccuracies. To the unprofessional actions by the author the contribution of an external link to a propagandist website after the article itself, which offers plenty of quantity and little truth must be added.

This article likely caused rightful offence to Greeks worldwide who have read it and which are faced with another misrepresentation of the facts directly involving their identity. This includes the Greeks of Australia, which are probably most likely to have encountered the controversial article. It is principle right that in light of the extreme sensitivity of the subject, the Editorial Board of your newspaper acts in order to provide remedy for the highly-charged situation created in contradiction of easily verifiable academic studies-based definitive conclusion, the plausibility of which is brought by mountains of evidence in forms of facts and logical interpretation.

Concluding that my country, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, is not and was not, by any stretch of the imagination “Alexander the Great's homeland”, adding that I as well as many of people of my kind think of themselves as Slavs, in opposition of the political imposition of twisted identity by some internal factors, including the Government, I kindly advice you to reinforce stricter standards of reporting, even if the subjects – from Australian perspective – may seem exotic. This is something you own your readers and an ethical duty you should adhere to because it is something good in itself.

Sincerely,
Vasko Gligorijević

Skoplje, FYROM
22-VIII-2009

Macedonian names and makeDonski pseudo-linguistics: The case of the name Kopria

Miltiades Elia Bolaris
August 02, 2009
americanchronicle.com

Balkan Illusion - phantasia archaica:

"...it is very interesting to note that many of the authentic ancient Macedonian words, according to their etymology and pronunciation, have a striking resemblance to the appropriate words used in the modern Macedonian language (and other so called "Slav" languages)[sic]"..."Kopria. This name has possible connections to the noun "kopra" (a dill). It is a well-known practice to derive personal names from those of the plant world. In 16th century Macedonia one finds the female name Kopra." From: "Similarities between ancient Macedonian and today's' Macedonian Culture (Linguistics and Onomastics)" by Aleksandar Donski, celebrity propagandist and self proclaimed "historian" from Skopje, FYROM.

Kopria / Copria / Κοπρία:

In the early 1970's, a clay "pithos" type jar was found in Egypt in an illegal excavation. It quickly found its way to the Louvre Museum. Inside it there was a lead sheet insrcibed in Greek and a tiny clay statuette of a female figure in a kneeling, submissive position. Her hands were tied to her back with thirteen bronze pins piercing through her clay body.

In "The ethnic origins of a Roman-Era Philtrokatadesmos (PGM IV 296-434)", Christopher Faraone, professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, describes how this find corresponded closely in text and in the clay doll treatment to another find, inscribed in (PGM IV. 335-406): "Marvelous love binding spell (philtrokatadesmos): Take wax (or clay) from a potter's wheel and make two figurines, a male and a female. Make the male in the form of Ares fully armed, holding a sword in his left hand, and threatening to plunge it into the right side of her neck. And make her with her arms behind her and down on her knees...". Then we hear of several other jars with clay or wax figurines with the thirteen bronze needles pinched in them and the accompanying lead katadesmoi that have been found and are being circulated among museums and legal or (mostly) underground art and antiquities dealers. The (PGM IV 296-434) is unique among them for its length and complexity. It demands from chthonian deities like Pluton, Kore Persephone, Hermes-Thoth and Adonis to bind a girl and "deliver" her - bound through infatuation and erotic passion - to the man who lustfully desires her. The full text of this Philtrokatadesmos can be found in the public domain, but here I will bring the middle part of it, that is of particular interest to us:

"...I adjure you (ἐξορκίζω / exorkizo ), all spirits (δαίμονες / demones ) in this place, to assist this ghost (δαιμων / demon). Rouse yourself for me, corpse spirit ( νεκυδαίμων / nekydemon ), whoever you are, whether male or female, and go into every place, into every quarter, into every house, and bind Κοπρία / Kopria, whom her mother Ταέσις / Taesis bore, the hair of whose head you have, for Αἰλουρίων / Ailourion, whom his mother named Κοπρία / Kopria bore, that she may not submit to vaginal nor anal intercourse, nor gratify another youth or another man except Αἰλουρίων / Ailourion only, whom his mother named Κοπρία / Kopria bore, and that she may not even be able to eat nor drink nor ever get sleep nor enjoy good health nor have peace in her soul or mind in her desire for Αἰλουρίων / Ailourion, whom his mother Κοπρία / Kopria bore, until Κοπρία / Kopria, whom her mother Ταέσις / Taesis bore, whose hair you have, will spring up from every place and every house, burning (with passion), and come to Αἰλουρίων / Ailourion, whom his mother named Κοπρία / Kopria bore, loving (and) adoring with all her soul, with all her spirit, with unceasing and unremitting and constant erotic binding, Αἰλουρίων / Ailourion, whom his mother named Κοπρία / Kopria bore, with a divine love, from this very day, from the present hour, for the rest of Κοπρία / Kopria's life...etc etc...Do not disobey my commands, ghost, whoever you are, whether male or female, but rouse yourself for me and go into every place, into every quarter, into every house, and bind Κοπρία / Kopria, whom her mother Ταέσις / Taesis bore, the hair of whose head you have, for Αἰλουρίων / Ailourion, whom his mother named Κοπρία / Kopria bore, that she may not submit to vaginal nor anal intercourse, nor gratify another youth or another man; and that she may not even be able to eat nor drink nor get sleep nor be at peace in her soul or mind in her desire, day and night, for Αἰλουρίων / Ailourion, whom his mother named Κοπρία / Kopria bore, loving (and) adoring him with all her heart, with all her spirit, like her own soul, Κοπρία / Kopria, whose hair you have, loving with a divine love, until death, Αἰλουρίων / Ailourion,

whom his mother named Κοπρία / Kopria bore. Now now quickly quickly! ...and again....and bring Κοπρία / Kopria, her mother Ταέσις / Taesis bore, whose hair you have, to Αἰλουρίων / Ailourion, whom his mother named Κοπρία / Kopria bore, burning, blazing, melting away in her soul, her spirit, her feminine part, loving (and) adoring with a divine love, until death, Αἰλουρίων / Ailourion, whom his mother named Κοπρία / Kopria bore. Now now quickly quickly!..." and so on and so on, it continues...

Bibl.: David G. Martinez, PMich 757: A Greek Love Charm from Egypt, Ann Arbor, 1991.

This is an immensely powerful, deep and dark magical text, that is casting hair-raising spells of magic, witchcraft, desire, fear and curse, repeating itself again and again, pressing, hammering and pounding point after point, word after word, threatening, cursing, begging, exhorting, exorcising and adjuring. It was written sometime between the 2nd and the 4th century AD and it comes to us from Roman-occupied but Greek-speaking Egypt, still fully immersed in her Hellenistic and Ptolemaic legacy. The characters appearing on this Philtrokatadesmos (besides the Demons and Spirits, Gods and other divinities, named or implied) are four persons, whose names the katadesmos preserved for us in posterity: There is young maiden named Κοπρία / Kopria, her mother, Ταέσις / Taesis, a young man, Αἰλουρίων / Ailourion and Ailourion's mother also named Κοπρία / Kopria.

At first sight, to any Greek speaking person Κοπρία / Kopria sounds like a very unusual choice for a name. Kopria as a noun means literally a pile of kopros, dung, the excrement of humans and (mostly) animals. To the modern mind this sounds like a most undesirable word, and just the thought that someone would want to use it as a name for their baby girl is unthinkable, to say the least! But then, I have not seen many modern religious processions where every pious parishioner is partaking in the religious reveling by carrying a huge phallus around the neighborhood either. Yet this was commonplace practice in Greek religion.

In the "Oxford Classical Dictionary", E. Mathews tells us that "While there was a natural tendency for desirable attributes to be chosen, it was not always the case, and it remains a matter of psychological curiosity why some forms where chosen, and even handed down within families: thus, "aisxros" 'ugly' forming "Aisxros", "Aisxra", "Aisxriwn", "Aisxrw"; "kopros" 'dung' forming "Kopriwv", "Kopria, "Kopris"; "simos" 'snub-nosed' forming "Simos", "Simulos", "Simiskos". I dare to say that he is probably wrong, since it is rare, if not impossible that a tradition happens for no reason, hidden or apparent. There is always an explanation; we simply have to look deeply in the undercurrents of it, to discover it.

To the Greeks, dung was simply viewed as an integral part of the cycle of life. A natural byproduct of life, which only created a problem of handling. The myth of the fifth labor of Heracles is very telling.

Having first killed with his bare hands the Nemea Lion, having eliminated through dagger and fire the Lernea Hydra, having caught unharmed the sacred Hind of Ceryneia and having captured alive the Erymanthean Boar, Heracles was now being asked by Eurystheus to do the humanly impossible: to clean the κόπρος / kopros the dunk out of the Augean Stables in one single day. It was such a huge task, that Heracles using brains and engineering as much as brute force to dig out channels to divert two rivers, was able to clean up years of accumulated cow excrement without even getting his hands dirty by it. Such was the effect this monumental task had on him, that having finished it, Heracles instituted the Olympic Games at the very site of his fifth labor (at Olympia, in the Peloponnese), as ancient legend tells us.

The beginning of the first Olympiad marked for the Greeks the beginning of their collective calendar, in the same way Christians count everything from before BC and after AD today, or the founding of Rome was used for the Romans. The fact that such a task was tied to the most important religious festival of the Greeks should give us a powerful and clear hint that the Greeks did not seem to be bothered by this "kopros-related" beginning of this, their most important national religious festival. The photograph in the beginning of this article is froma metope of the temple of Zeus in Olympia, and it is showing Heracles working on his fifth labot, cleaning the kopros of Augeas, under the guidance of Athena.

The existing epigraphical record of Hellenic inscriptions is full of mentions of females that were named Κοπρια / Kopria, and only one in its closest male equivalent, Κοπριανος / Koprianos. Here below are a few characteristic inscriptions:

In the Macedonian city of Beroia we locate inscription I.Leukopetra 128, about a preteen girl named Kopria, that is being dedicated to the Great Mother of Gods:

Μητρὶ Θεῶ κοράσιον

ὀνόματι Κοπρίαν, ἐτῶν

∙ ιʹ ∙ ὃ λαβὼν ἐξ ἕμα-

To the Mother of Gods a young girl

named Kopria, years

10, which having taken from ema-

A loving dedication by a husband to the memory of his deceased wife from Eordaia in Macedonia in on inscription EAM 131, which reads:

Δάμαχος Κοπρίᾳ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἡρωίδι τῇ

συνβίῳ ἐκ τῶν ἐκείνης μνήμης χάριν.

Damachos to Kopria daughter of Alexandros, a hero lady, to

his life's companion to the grace of the memories of her life

From Thessaloniki, again in Macedonia, comes a simple inscription, IG X, 2 1 387:

Κοπρία Πολυ-

νείκης χαῖρε.

Kopria, daughter of Poly

nike Greetings

Further west, in Sicily we find the funerary stela IG XIV 137 where in a very rare occurrence, as mentioned above) the name is being used in its masculine form, as a man's name, Koprianos:

Κοπριανὸς

ἐνθάδε κῖτε

Koprianos

lies here

From Thebes, in Central Greece, comes inscription SEG 42:538 :

Κοπρία Φιλήτῳ τῷ

ἰδίῳ ἀνδρὶ μνίας χά-

Kopria To Philitos her

own husband in memory

South of Thebes, in Athens, Attica we find inscription IG II² 12221

Μωμὼ Κοπρίᾳ τῇ θυγατρὶ



μνήμης χάριν.

Μomo to Kopria her daughter

in memory's grace

Having gone the full circle, we now return again to Hellenistic Egypt where in the museum of the city of Alexander, Aλεξανδρια / Alexandria / Al Iskendariya, we find inscription Breccia, Alexandria Mus. 359:

Κοπρία (ἐτῶν) λ...ʹ

Kopria (age) 3...

To our amazement we see that the name Kopria, despite modern expectations to the opposite, was a rather wide spread name in the ancient Greek world. It was actually very popular in the fertile plains of Macedonia. To us, removed as we are from the ancient society by more than two thousand some years, this name sounds strange, to say the least, because of the connotation we ourselves bring onto it.

The explanation, I think must lie elsewhere. Everything in life depends on how you decide to view things. In my opinion, the name Kopria, in the mind and the ears of the ancient Greeks did not as much bring the obviously undesirable connection of the foul smell and sight of kopros / dung, as the positive attributes of it. We need to forget, some of us, our city upbringing, and think for a moment as farmers, with cultivated fields, orchards and gardens, and this will bring us on the right track.

An expression exists in modern Greek "από την κοπριά το ρόδο / apo tin kopria to rodo" which translates into "from the manure comes the rose". The expression refers to a child that grew up to become a good person, despite a deficient upbringing, coming from a "bad" family. This expression, I believe, can become the key to understanding the usage of the name Kopria among all ancient Greeks, and the Macedonians in particular. It vividly and clearly expresses what we must understand the Greeks saw in manure, in kopros : not the pile of smelly dung, that the city person sees in it, but the promise of a fertile field that the farmer reads into it. The ancient Greek word κόπρος / kopros, which incidentally has exactly the same meaning in modern Greek, is a direct derivative of the Indo-European root word *kokwr, of the same meaning : dung / manure.

Like the huge erect phalluses at the religious processions of the ancient Greeks, kopros was also seen by them as a blessing to the fertility of the agricultural land. Until very recently, horse and cow dung was used not only as a source of excellent field and garden fertilizer (as it is still used today, despite its foul smell, even in the gardens of expensive homes, albeit now sold in colorful plastic bags that have photos of beautiful roses printed on them), but it was also saved and used in winter as a fuel to heat the home. It was even used as a very practical heat insulation, being spread on the exterior walls of the humble, unbaked-brick walls of the farmers' homes. Today we cannot even begin to comprehend the mere idea of spreading animal excrement on the exterior walls of our homes, but in ancient times, and in fact up to recent memory, this was simply a practical fact of life, as it still is in less advanced parts of the modern world.

This is why the name Kopria, literary meaning "of the manure" despite the impossible odds to us, was in fact to them a very normal name. It is a well documented fact that this was an immensely popular name with the ancient Greeks, as attested in the epigraphical record from Macedonia to Athens and from Egypt to Sicily. This therefore, should make us think in this direction. I believe that Κοπρια / Kopria, being given as a name almost exclusively to female babies (with only one rare exception that we were able to find in the record, from Sicily, in similar male equivalent as Koprianos) must be seen as a family investment towards the good will of the fertility deities; an assurance for agricultural fecundity, a hope for wealth through fruitfulness and finally as a promise for familial growth through health and fertility of the female body.

In fact it not very unusual that the name Κοπρος / Kopros and Κοπρια / Kopria appear also as toponyms in several places of the Greek world. There is the ancient municipality of Κοπρος / Kopros in Λαυρεωτικη / Laureotike, near the modern village of Legrena, in Αττικη / Attica. There is a small Aegean island called Κοπρια / Kopria, in the Cyclades, between Naxos, Keros, Koufonesia, Amorgos and Donoysa (Greece, Cyclades, Eparhia Naxou [coordinates: 36.9875 25.63833] (http://www.geonames.org/maps/google_36.988_25.638.html). There is a town square called Kopria in the island of Alonissos and a cape Kopria in Pelion, in Thessaly.

Strabo / Στραβων the Geographer in his description of Sicily and the terrible double monster of Scylla and Kharybdis, he also speaks of a beach shore by the straits of Messina, between the tip of the boot of Italy and Sicily. It is close to the Sicilian Greek city of Tauromenion / Ταυρομενιον which in Greek means the city of the bulls, and the Italians now call it Taormina. The beach was named by the Sicilian Greeks Kopria. Despite the explanation for the name of Kopria beach that Strabo passes to us, I think that considering that it was next to the city of the bulls, we can already start guessing quite accurately how the beach got its name:

"ἐντεῦθεν δὲ καὶ τὴν φυγὴν ἐποιήσατο ἐκπεσὼν ἐκ τῆς νήσου. δείκνυται δὲ καὶ ἡ Χάρυβδις μικρὸν πρὸ τῆς πόλεως ἐν τῶι πόρωι, βάθος ἐξαίσιον, εἰς ὃ αἱ παλίρροιαι τοῦ πορθμοῦ κατάγουσι φυσικῶς τὰ σκάφη τραχηλιζόμενα μετὰ συστροφῆς καὶ δίνης μεγάλης· καταποθέντων δὲ καὶ διαλυθέντων τὰ ναυάγια παρασύρεται πρὸς ἠιόνα τῆς Ταυρομενίας, ἣν καλοῦσιν ἀπὸ τοῦ συμπτώματος τούτου Κοπρίαν."

"In the ship-channel, only a short distance off the city, is to be seen Kharybdis, a monstrous deep, into which the ships are easily drawn by the refluent currents of the strait and plunged prow-foremost along with a mighty eddying of the whirlpool; and when the ships are gulped down and broken to pieces, the wreckage is swept along to the Tauromenian shore, which, from this occurrence, is called Kopria."

Στραβων Γεωγραφια 6.3.2 / Strabo, Geography 6.2.3

Finally there is a Κόπραινα / Kopraina beach by the city of Arta in 'Ηπειρος / Epeiros and a Kopria beach οn the island of Ρόδος / Rhodes.

Beauty, someone could argue, is not just in the eye, but also in the ear of the beholder. Words are only vocalizations. They are meaningless sounds in themselves. It is for us to attach the meaning to them.

Once a baby girl was born and the fertility-wishing name of Kopria was given to that girl, the girl was in turn giving new meaning to the word, like all babies bring new meaning to the name we sometimes randomly attach to them.

The Artan boys and girls going with their parents to the "full of dung" beach shown above, might initially laugh at hearing the name, but they do love going to the beach and the name then becomes synonymous with the fun and play they enjoy and the beautiful childhood memories it brings to them later on.

What´s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

tells us William Shakespeare (1564–1616) in Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene II, 47-48.

Yet, despite Shakespeare, who wrote his play some eighteen centuries too late for her, on a tombstone inscription belonging to a girl from Macedonia, we find traces of a naïve grievance of this girl for the name given to her by her parents:

Οὔνομα μὲν Μακέταις ἐπιχώριον.

οὔνεκα μεμφθή μηδέ ενί.

Κοπρίαν μ' ὠνόμασαν γενέται.

Kaibel, Epigr. Graeca 313 (also mentioned by G. Babiniotis)

"The name itself is local to the Maketais" (note: Μακέταις / Maketais was another name for the Macedonians) "because of it the blame should go to no one" (μηδέ ενί = μηδενί). "Kopria I was named by my parents".

So then, we realize that this would not have been this Macedonian girl's first name of choice, had she been given a voice on the matter. Yet she accepts it because it is traditional and "local with the Maketais", the Macedonians (Μακέταις ἐπιχώριον). But personal names are never a matter of personal choice: they are always given to us, as children, as a matter of tradition. Parents have their own reasons (tradition based, ideological or religious) for choosing names for their offspring.

Professor Donski from Skopje has (not unwittingly) confused the ancient Greek name Kopria, with the Slavonic word for dill, the aromatic plant whose seeds are used to give the anisette taste to ouzo and other similar anise drinks. We comprehend his agony in trying to try to find some phonetic excuses to hold on from, and try to create imaginary connections with the ancient Greek past of the Macedonians, but we cannot allow him to get away with such an unscientific trick in support of Skopje's Slavomacedonian nationalism.

The aromatic plant dill, which the Greeks call Anethos / Ἄνηθος or Aneson / Ἄνησον, appears in most Slavonic languages in a word that is similar sounding to Kopria, yet it comes from a completely different linguistic root.

Dill in Bulgarian is kopur [копър], in Ukrainian krip [кріп], in Russian ukrop [укроп], in Slavomacedonian kopra [Копра] in Slovak kôpor, in Polish koper and in Czech kopr. Through association with the Slavs, it was also taken on by the Albanians [Kopër, Kopra] and the Yiddish speaking Jews of Eastern Europe [קאָפּער, קראָפּ, קריפּ, אוקראָפּ Koper, Krop, Krip, Ukrop ]. The Slavonic names for dill are all derived from a common Slavonic root *kapr´ = dill, which in turn is related to the Baltic-Lithuanian kvapas = smell, aroma and kvepia = fragrant.

There is absolutely no relation that can be credibly established between the (attested 1500 years later) Slavonic name for dill, therefore, and the ancient Macedonian Greek name Kopria/Κοπρία.

Note: My thanks to Soteria Tsimoura / Σωτηρία Τσιμούρα a graduate student of Media and Communications in Germany, for her invaluable assistance in the creation of this article and her tireless suggestions and corrections of this and many other manuscripts. M.B.

INDIGENOUS MACEDONIA - A HISTORY OF GREECE

Scientists from Sweden and India have joined forces to study descendants of Alexander the Great's army.

Experts in bid to uncover a Great mystery

By Dean Nelson in London
Saturday August 08 2009

A road being built in a remote part of the Himalayas is putting researchers on course to study descendants of Alexander the Great's army.

According to legend, the fair-haired and blue-eyed inhabitants of Malana are descended from Alexander's soldiers.

A team of anthropologists has set out to unravel a mystery that has fascinated historians for centuries. Scientists from Sweden and India have joined forces to establish the origins of the culture and language.

Democracy
The village boasts what is believed to be the oldest experiment in democracy. Its people operate their own republic, with an elected upper and lower house. The village has a judicial system with a court to resolve disputes among 200 families.

According to the legend, Alexander stopped in Malana, part of Himachal Pradesh, in 326BC when he defeated King Porus. The battle sapped his army's confidence and some settled with local women.

Professor PK Vaid, of the Institute of Tribal Studies, Shimla, said DNA testing could determine any links to people in Macedonia.

"Their features appear to be European," he said. "They have blue eyes and fair hair. Their democratic system could have its roots in Greece. It's unique."

source:independent.ie

============================================================

Such a long journey
by Nimi Kurian

The legend of Alexander the Great lives on. In Himachal Pradesh’s sleepy Malana, a cluster of 12 villages comprising eight clans, the mystique comes alive when its inhabitants proclaim themselves as descendants of the Greek king and speak a language only they can understand.
This may be unravelled soon: a Swedish university is in talks with the Institute of Tribal Studies of Himachal University is to launch a research to understand the mysterious but small population.

Uppsala University, one of the oldest institutions Nordic countries founded in 1477, and named after the town where it is located, boasts of preserving a large number of ancient symbols that have survived even today.

The Institute of Tribal Studies director P. K. Vaid says that the project had been broadly divided into two parts — trace the origin of the language that the people of Malana speak and trace the origin of the people. Alexander the Great had defeated the Indian king Porus along the banks of the Beas. After a series of campaigns on India, his soldiers felt tired and wanted to return home. Alexander, too, is said to have gone back home. Lore has it that some of his soldiers, too tired to return, preferred to settle down along the banks of the Beas and it is said residents of Malana may be their descendants.

source:hindu.com

Interview of Vojislav Sarakinski, expert in Ancient Macedonia, for "Globus" weekly

Quasiscientists Antiquize the Nation

Vojislav Sarakinski, historian: quasi-scientific works are written with political, even politicant goals

Vojislav Sarakinski (1975) is employed at the Institute for History at the Philosophic Faculty, holding and in this very moment practicing the term exercises on subjects History of Ancient Macedonians prior to 323 BC, History of Ancient Macedonians 323 BC -313 CE, History of the Ancient East, History of Ancient Greece and History of Ancient Rome for the groups History and Classical Studies. Performance of teaching on the subject History of Ancient Macedonians, History of Ancient Age 1 and History of the Ancient Age 2 for the groups History with archivistics and Archeology under mentorship of Prof. Dr. Nade Proeva. M.A. Sarakinski, several years ago resisted Professors Boševski and Tentov from the Electrotechnical Faculty, which decided to get into the act of deciphering of ancient letters and languages. They provided “exegesis” of the mid-part of the text at the Rosetta Stone and proclaimed it as a Paleomacedonian. So, it would seem, everything started...

Written by: Branka D. Najdovska

You are among the rare ones who spoke publicly, I.e defied the so-called antiquization of Macedonia, with the text “The Discreet Death of the Methodology”...

-Basically, I opposed a very non-sustained, even pseudo-scientific work in which pretensions were made towards a spectacular discovery. I felt obliged do demystify a way of thinking which has nothing common not only with the study of Antiquity, but not even with the scientific work at all. Regarding the antiquzation – it is a political term which recently appeared in the public and which at that time still was not actual , although, a recognition has to be made that many things among us go into the direction of thinking of the authors of the work.


Let us clarify for the wider public: what is the Rosetta Stone? Does it have any relationship with us at all and meaning for us?

-For the scientists, the Rosetta Stone is a proclamation of one King from the dynasty of Ptolemaids in relation to the rights and obligations of royal statues within temples. That is a jurist and archival document which, in itself, does not contain anything especially interesting and is one of the line of other such proclamations. The Rosetta Stone became important for the science because, on the basis of demotic Egyptian and the Ancient Greek text which are on it, Champollion managed to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs; Therefore, it is a document with great scientific importance not so much because of its content, but because of the role he had in a certain moment from the development of science about the past, and that is why it is famous in the entire world.


Why somebody undertook to reexamine precisely the Rosetta Stone?

-That cannot be said with certainty by nobody, with the exception of the authors of the achievement, although I perceive that a new exegesis of the Rosetta Stone sound much more grandiose than a a new exegesis of a piece of papyrus in a museum depot. The undertakings with bombastic goals always have bombastic subjects of “investigation”: that is why Pyramids are being dug-out in Bosnia; Troy is everywhere from Herzegovina, via Italy, up to England, just not there where its has been found; Under the Sphinx there is a secret sanctuary of aliens; the Pyramids, the Sphinx, the Rosetta Stone and similar generally recognizable things are causing much greater publicity from a jar, or, for example, a part of a ring – if you strive towards publicity and not science.


Does a practice established itself, just like in this case, that non-competent ones are doing all and everything? Somehow, everybody got involved into that “changing of the consciousness, now and here”...?


-Although it is still not an everyday practice, that shall be present more and more. Among us it seems that the competence and professionalism are not important, but only interest towards certain theme, in order that a series of “works” are born with, allegedly spectacular discoveries. But that cannot be stopped, nor to be banned. Such works were present from always and they shall exist, not only among us , but everywhere throughout the world. But, what is really bad is the degree of media attention which is given to these private “hobby exercises”. Certainly that people shall continue to write and throw away with scientific “truths”, when the Media are asking statements from them, they are organizing promotion and conferences, they are inviting them on TV, they devote hours and hours on their theories. The trouble is, thus, in our society, especially in the Media which are in a hurry to gave them publicity, and are forgetting to ask themselves does that to which they pay such attention is deserving discussion at all. If this is a way to change somebody's consciousness, and I do not know why it should be changed, that that way is wrong and almost ridiculous.


Do at least some of these works have some scientific value?

-In general lines no, nor they could have; I am a historian, and I think that nobody would accept me to fix his teeth, or to project a house to him. Large part of these writings have nothing in common neither with the science, neither with the history, nor with the sane mind; a part are basically, to the certain extent, true, but they reveal to the world “grandiose” scientific truths: that the Ancient Macedonians had their own language, that Cleopatra VII originated from a Macedonian dynasty, and similar things that can be read in a high-school textbook.


Why the scientist did not reacted stronger in relation to these questions?

-A fact is that the scientific public in first time intimately laughed at them, but underestimated the influence of these “scientist”. Quasiscientific works are written not with scientific, but with political and even politicant goals, and scientists, as a rule, provide everything to by further away from daily politics. With that, they have left a broad and undefended field for expression of all those who want to speak about anything, and who most commonly do not know and cannot do that.


So, the scientists themselves “avoided” the debate...

-Its depends how do you define that “avoiding”, but in basis that maybe is true. Or, I would rather said that they did not managed themselves well into the entire situation. People which proffesionaly study the distant past (historians, archaeologists, classical philologists, numismatists, e***raphists) are usualy comparatively small group of people and they have homogeneous values in relation to the interest, ethics and quality of that what they do. They suddenly are forced to work as a part of a system based on different values, even on profit, which is incoprehenisble for them.

Is it a case that some relevant political factor approves such state of affairs because of profit?

-I am talking about the Media-televisions, weeklies, daily press, even publishing houses.It is clear that these are not a humanitarian organization, but they work on basis of market logic. Outside scientific circles you will have difficulty “selling” broken pot for cereals or ordinary glass, but that's why you will easily “sell” Pyramids, Sphinxs and Rosetta Stones. The public demands “great” answers and likable conclusions, now and here; and that, no serious explorer will neither pull out of sleeve, nor it will invent it in order to be liked by the audience.

However, it is not a state imposed by the media, but by other, conditionally said, political factors.

-That, also is true; and that is a part of the different values I mentioned. The ethics and the interests of the scientist and the ethics and interests of the politics are not the same. These value system collide – and here the scientist is faced with the strongest moral and professional dilemmas. In basis, the science about the past is never totally objective, nor it can be totally liberated from the person and the community. We like to believe that our findings are the total, objective and only truth, and actually we are making exegesis of the fact based on our own personal system of values. That is how we decide what to explore, what to “touch”, what to dig or provide exegesis again. In the moment when upon those solutions of ours “external”, non-scientific factor begin to influence, than the problems start.

Is it precisely because of that that the scientific public kept a long silence and with that approved the euphoria about the “direct relation of today's with Ancient Macedonians”?

-You shall understand that I cannot speak in the name of all. Who wanted to say something, he said it there where he found a place and desire; who kept silence, knows best why he kept silence. But, the problem is not that simple as you present it. In this case, if scientist are silent, it does not mean that they are approving the hysteria. If one needs to define the behavior of our academic community, it could be said that among us, mainly three patterns of behavior are manifesting themselves. The first pattern is the pattern of ignoring. A part of our scientists cannot comprehend from where so many pseudo-scientific theories and works appeared; they, in some sense, are ashamed to answer to such banalities and are hoping that this is a temporary fashion, something that will disappear out of itself. The second pattern is the pattern of late reaction. Many saw that the job went further from a distasteful joke and that something should be done, after all-here I include myself-but now they are facing with the unpleasant question “where you have been prior to now”, a question which sounds justified. The third pattern is the pattern of auto-censorship. People are silent because they know that what will say shall not have a resonance with the public; they know that they are going to be attacked on a non-scientific and lowly manner, so therefore are choosing either to be silent or to go forward with thesis which are “more acceptable” in this political moment.


The last edition of the “History of the Macedonian People”, by a group of authors, affirm the thesis that the ancient element is dominant among Macedonians. Is there any pattern of behavior here?

-I cannot answer this, because it would be ungrateful and dishonest to give an opinion about unread book. The book, so, should be primarily carefully read, and not comment on basis on several simplified television contribution and torn quotes. Regarding the expertly part of the question, I am not convinced that affinity to one or other genetic, ethnic or whatever element my be measured with deciliters, kilograms or percentages. Even if it can-the story about the ethnogenesis and ethnic belonging is so complex, and is a mosaic of so many different elements, that I do not believe that this in any way shall change what are we today.


Even if some genetic ancestry becomes proven, nevertheless, the nation depends from the culture, from the language...?

-Absolutely, but from many other things. Actually, the ethnic belonging of one human has a very little dependence with his genetic code. The question how a human feels and declares, to which community he belongs , where he sees and looks his place in the wider community, is not a genetic question at all, but is sociological and culturological. There is no certain primordial, inborn, priorly given and eternal feeling of belonging to one community-just like the identity of the community to which a human belongs is not cemented in time, but it continuously changes and evolves. This is especially proper for the Antiquity. In many cases we prefer to speak about belonging to a certain cultural sphere, for cultural identity and worldview, and not about ethnic identity. Imposition of language, changing of ethnic belonging, planned conquering and melting, precise definition of somebody's ethnicity simply did not exist as a concepts. For the human from Antiquity, especially after Alexander's conquests, these question would be banal.


What do you think, who needs this return to the past, “return of the identity of the dead ones”, something with which the present time is being killed? How much, to us, to Macedonians, these things are necessary?

-According to me, we are not returning to the past-that is physically unfeasible. We cannot abolish EVN* and “Vodostopanstvo”**, but shrouds on us, put a Macedonian causia on the head, to compete in chariot races, to go in line behind a long stick with a sun on the top and praise Apolo. That would be really antiquization, and that is why I think that this overused term is wrong in its root. What is happening to us today is painting the present times with some ancient nuances, strange combination of light populism and unscientific “re-reading” of the past; the final goals, which were recently so vividly explained have nothing common with the true scientific ethics. I, for example, think that our past, and our present times are perfectly varied and interesting; that our identity perfectly clearly drawn, that we have things to represent with, and things to be proud with just like we are; in order to be convinced and be proud from that, I don't need any reminiscences with symbols, signs and messages from the Antiquity. Furthermore, I do not see a reason to involve ourselves in debates who is older and who was here from ever. Such debates and quarrels are suitable only to nervous and uncertain people which are not certain in themselves, so they are looking for evidence about that how old and great they are.
*Electro-Energetic company
**Water supply company


As a scientist, but as a citizen of this state as well, on what we should focus ourselves in order to became “equal” with other peoples?

-We are absolutely equal with all other peoples. From where is the idea that our people is not equal, under what criteria and in relationship to what? Just because illogical restrictions are imposed on our states and tasks which are not demanded from other states, that maybe makes us unequal as a state, but not at all as a people. But, if you are talking about what should we do as a people, in order to lessen the burden from our state, that is something entirely else. I neither can, nor I like to give political lessons, because I'm qualified to talk only about the historical science. Here the answer is easy, and only one – focusing high standards, quality, ethics and professionalism in the work. It should be known precisely who is working what, and how he is doing that. So, an archaeologist should dig, not a doctor; exegesis should be made by a historian, not an electrician; classical philologist should translate, and not a lawyer; and vice versa, the historian and archaeologist should not build rails and multi-level buildings. And, of course-from all of them highest possible standards should be sought, and in exchange a full work independence should be provided for them. The scientific circle should be enough motivated, financed and supported to work on the information and obligatory, as an only front, to publish it there where its proper. Not in contact shows, on radio or in newspaper, but in a scientific publication, from where it will be spread throughout the world. As long as this is a preoccupation of politicians, economists, journalists, quasiscientist, amateurs and interested citizens, we won't have order and progress, but anarchy, bad foundation and bad basis for performance in the world, which shall result in failure.


In that case, do we need and certain “reexamination” of the scientists before the emanation and acceptance of their thesis?

-If we are talking about academically educated scientist-absolutely not. Who is he who shall decide where somebody's academic thesis is acceptable or not? It should be published, and than, with extensive scientific criticism, it will be easily seen whether its acceptable or not. Aprioristic checking is a censorship-and who will check “the checker”? But we are forgetting to often that the scientific polemics doesn't means fighting, assaults and accusations between people. Among us the art of scientific debate is forgotten; if you discuss for somebody's scientific thesis, that has a private perception and it returns to you as a personal assault. In healthy scientific circles it is perfectly normally that two scientists are close friends privately, and bitter opponents in scientific stances. So, that is a thing which should live again among us, and by no means any control or censorship.

source:Најдовска, Б.Д. "Квазинаучници ја антиквизираат нацијата", Глобус 115, 30.VI.2009
Translated by Vasko Gligorijević

Is there a Rift between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of "Macedonia" on Alexander? (answer to Washington Post)

by Miltiades Elias Bolaris
americanchronicle.com


On a Washington Post article, ("Another Rift Between Greece, Macedonia, Both Lay Claim to Alexander the Great", July 28, 2009) Craig Whitlock is intend on sending us scrambling back to our History books. Should we be talking about Alexandros o Megas /ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ o ΜΕΓΑΣ or Aleksandar Veliki / Александар Велики? Was he Greek or was he Slavic? I will let the reader do their own reading and research. Any encyclopaedia, in any language, anywhere in the world, except for the ones published in the former Yugoslav republic will be fine.

Mr. Whitlock is correctly pointing out that Alexander's "cult of personality is just starting to grip this tiny Balkan country", speaking of FYROM, informing us that among other childish actions that the government in Skopje is doing to annoy the Greeks is the erection of "a 72-foot-tall marble colossus of Alexander astride his favorite warhorse, Bucephalus, which will dominate the skyline of the capital, Skopje". Our information is that it is actually a bronze statue, not marble, but the rest is correct: Greeks are understandably annoyed by the ethno-religious cult that has hijacked the political debate of their neighbor. Why did I say "childish"? Because only little children do things to annoy others...not governments, not nations. Someone who getting "annoyed" will become hardened and less willing to give in. This is something that FYROM's "diplomats in training" have yet to grasp. When they try to "annoy" the Greek government, what they essentially end up achieving is is aggravate the Greek electorate, especially the Greek Macedonian (of Historic Macedonia, in Nothern Greece, not FYROM) into demanding a tougher stance from Athens against the "Skopianoi". The article is correctly pointing out that "this glorification of Alexander and other ancient heroes" is derided by critics in Skopje as "antiquization." I have also heard the term Bukefalism (Bucephalism), a more sarcastic term by rightfully embarrassed intellectuals in FYROM.

The issue, as presented in Mr. Whitlock's article, is stated as follows: Does a country have the right to be call itself what it wants? A second issue, but more important is this issue's "potential to destabilize a region still trying to recover from the Balkan wars of the 1990s".

Let us start with the name issue itself. If the reader goes to any encyclopaedia, he or she will quickly find out who Alexander was, who the Macedonians were and what language the ancient Macedonians spoke. For the reader who would want to read further on this, then another article would be more appropriate: "The alleged differences between the Macedonians and the other ancient Greeks", (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/101463).

The name Macedonia itself is Greek, meaning the "high lands", and Makednoi/Μακεδνοί or Makedones/Μακεδόνες are the highlanders. "Hesiod first mentioned 'Makedon', the eponym of the people and the country, as a son of Zeus, a grandson of Deukalion, and so a first cousin of Aeolus, Dorus, and Xuthus; in other words he considered the 'Makedones' to be an outlying branch of the Greek-speaking tribes, with a distinctive dialect of their own, 'Macedonian', is what we read in the "Oxford Classical Dictionary", 3rd ed. (1996), pp.904,905.

There are about a half a million marble inscriptions that have been found in Macedonia, all written in Greek, with the occasional Latin one, after the Roman conquest, but then still in the small minority. None has been found in any other language.

Finally, we have the strongest indication on the ethnicity of the Ancient Macedonians, in their Greek language: This is precisely the language that Alexander and his victorious Macedonians spread throughout the Asian lands they took over, including the dominion of Egypt in Africa. The Slavs whose descendants now claim exclusivity over the use of the name Macedonia, appeared in the Balkan peninsula more than a thousand years AFTER Alexander. Hence the irritation of the Greeks when others try to claim their ancient history. When someone claims your history, what they also claim is your land. If someone claims the title to your house, he is not simply claiming a piece of paper to hang on a wall as a souvenir: he is actually claiming your house, land, walls and roof.

Craig Whitlock seems to be siding with "Macedonian officials" who "said they cannot understand why Greece sees their country's name as a threat or thinks they have a secret plan to annex northern Greece. "It's laughable," said Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki, noting that the Macedonian military consists of 8,000 troops and a fleet of eight helicopters.

I would beg to differ with Mr. Whitlock's seeming naivete, for I cannot imagine that he has not read the 20th century history of the land that is Macedonia, before he wrote what he wrote. I am very certain that he knows that two Balkan wars have been fought over the control of Macedonia, the land. Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and later Yugoslavia, along with numerous other players, including Austrians, Germans, Italians and Albanians fought in two world wars in their attempt to become masters of Macedonia. Yugoslavia and Greece almost came to a clash right after WWII, when Tito made a thinly veiled attempt to carve parts of Macedonia from Greece and incorporate them into Yugoslavia, but actively joining one side in the Greek civil war of the 1940's. His reasons were far from ideological, it was purely a land grab. You may read some of the background in another, related article: "A brief overview of the Macedonian name issue" (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/109817).

As for Anton Milososki, FYROM's foreign minister, he may try to appear laughing at the suggestion of the threat his country is posing to Greece, but his boss's trips to Ankara and the rousing welcome the Turkish Political-Military establishment prepared for Nikola Gruevski there, did not go unnoticed in Athens. As for FYROM's eight helicopters, lined up against Greece's formidable air force, we know that Greece is not arming itself against FYROM, it is an attack from Turkey that it is always prepared to confront. In such a confrontation, FYROM can easily become the straw that will break the camel's back. Alternatively, we need to remember that only a few years ago, the Kosovar Albanians "defeated" the all powerful Serbian army, without firing a winning shot: others, Americans and Western Europeans, even Turks did the fighting for them. In history, you cannot pretend to play naive. You can always expect the worse case scenario. When Bulgaria entered the second Balkan war, all it had against it was the Greek and the Serbian armies, and the Bulgarian army was larger than the other two combined. It expected a quick victory in two weeks' time, long enough for the Great powers to intervene. Things did not go as planned, the Greeks and Serbs started winning, and then hell broke loose: Turks and Romanians joined the war against Bulgaria, and Bulgaria from formidable attacker ended up the defender, fighting for its existence. Moral of the story: If someone has land claims on your home, you do not simply shrug your shoulders and walk away. You confront the issue, until there is a resolution.

The former Yugoslav republic, under the 1995 agreement agreed to change its flag (which hitherto had used a Greek Macedonian Symbol). It also agreed "to rewrite its constitution to include a promise never to violate Greek territory or interfere in Greece's internal affairs". This basically means that the original constitution had made explicit references to a United Makedonija/Обединета Македонија/Obedineta Makedonija, the old Bulgarian and later Yugoslav slogan which was a war cry for land grab of historic Macedonia, from Northern Greece. Obviously they had to change it. They felt humiliated in the process, that is probably true. On the other hand, any little boy that senselessly tries to bully a stronger classmate in school and ends up getting slapped around, feels rightfully humiliated. The 30 year old amateur diplomats who have been running the little country's foreign policy for the last eighteen years are good at creating peaks of crises with bravado and hullabaloo, only to smash their heads on the wall, bringing unnecessary disappointment to their own people. This is precisely what they did in last year's NATO conference in Romania, when, with G.W.Bush's full support they tried to slip into NATO, bypassing the name issue, with champagne bottles ready to pop. When disaster struck, they did not know what to do and they were crying in front of the TV cameras, talking of a national catastrophe.

Mr. Whitlock's tells his readers that "Leaders in Macedonia, a poor, landlocked country about the size of New Hampshire, warned they may have trouble holding the nation together if Greece does not relent soon. Internal unrest, they said, could easily spread to other fragile nations in the Balkans...". let us take this argument and consider its opposite side: Greeks have been warning FYROM's politicians that may have trouble holding their nation together if the governing clique in Skopje does not relent soon and stop playing with Balkan fire.

Why is this line of arguments more correct? For several reasons. First of all, it was not Greece that started this whole mess, it was the Ultra-nationalist hotheads in Skopje. they are the ones who started and they are the ones who can instantly stop it. They adopted for themselves the name Macedonian, as if this name was existing in vacuum as a "freeware". Not so, since a province of Macedonia exists since 1913 in Greece.

While the name Macedonia was Greek in antiquity, by the early 20th century a multiple of people were considered geographically "Macedonians", for being inhabitants of Macedonia, in the same way people who lived in Bosnia Herzegovina were all Bosnians Herzegovinans but others were catholic, others Orthodox yet others Muslim. Macedonia was even more complex: people of a multiple linguistic, ethnic and religious affiliations made up its multiethnic mix. Everyone was a Macedonian, BUT NONE was an ethnic "Macedonian". This had to wait until 1943, when the Communist Party of Yugoslavia established a Communist Party of "Makedonija" and became determined to turn its Serbian, Bulgarian and other (Slavic and not only) inhabitants into full-bloodied "Makedonci".

Since the 2.6 million Greeks of Macedonia have a cultural Macedonian identity, they cannot forgo their own identity just because half as many Slavs north of their land decided to usurp the name Macedonian and try to make it an "ethnic" name. This needs to be understood. I will repeat it. When there is a shared name, a shared geographic identity, you cannot have one of them claim that THEY are the ones, the REAL ones, the TRUE ones and that the others now have to change into something else. Nothing aggravated a Macedonian Greek more than someone telling him "...so are you a Greek or a Macedonian?".

To a Greek this sounds like..."are you an American or a Californian?". If Baja California at some point in its future decides to become an independent state, cutting itself off from Mexico and calls itself California, will this give the Bajan Californians the right to be called the "ethnic" Californians subsequently refusing persons from San Francisco or Los Angeles their right to have a "Californian" identity?

Now, let's see again how it sounds: "Oh, you are from Los Angeles?...So, are you an American or a Californian? Do you speak Californian (which is of course perfectly Spanish, just the Mexican dialect of Baja California Spanish, now renamed "Californian") or you speak American"? It will not sound too convincing to many Californians, will it? Well, this is precisely what the Greeks have to deal with, for the last eighteen years. The Bulgarian and Serbian speaking Slavic population decides to change the name of their land and call it Makedonija. Then they decide to rename their Bulgarian dialect "Makedonski" and now they demand that the Greeks of Macedonia forgo their cultural and geographic identity as Macedonians. This is not going to happen, no matter how much the governments in Athens decide to "cooperate" and give in to seem cooperative.

But, "The problem is threatening the fabric of our society," Gjorge Ivanov, the president of Macedonia, said in an interview. "The pressure that Greece is making is destabilizing the whole region." is that so? And who told you to base your ethnic identity on a BIG LIE? If you have been lying to your own people for two generations about their true identity, is this now OUR problem? the Greeks of Macedonia can counter. And who is destabilizing "the whole region"? Who has been screaming about "United Makedonija!", who is polluting the internet with screams of "Solun" (the capital of Greek Macedonia, the one million strong city of Thessaloniki) "is the capital of United Makedonija!", who is being 19th century style irredentist?

Who is refusing to see reality in the eyes and tries to dig up ancient Greek Kings and adopt them as their own, refuting the true Slavic identity of their own people? Who is publishing State-sanctioned History books (the latest one came out a month ago), declaring that the Makedonci are not a Slavic nation! Is it the Greeks? The Serbs, The Bulgarians? No, it is people like this very same President Mr. Ivanov, and his boss, Nikola Gruevski.

Lincoln said it very eloquently that you cannot lie to ALL the people ALL the time. The BIG LIE will eventually catch up with you, at some point or another! It surely caught about with more than a hundred thousand Skopjan citizens to date who, fed up with the 35% unemployment, and unable to cash Alexander the Great's 72ft tall bronze statue for food stamps, have opted to go to the Bulgarian embassy in Skopje and declare themselves "ethnic Bulgarians". How many of them in reality feel Bulgarian is difficult to say, and at the end of the day it will not make any difference. For sure, every single one of them greatly appreciates the brand new red EU passport that allows them to find a job anywhere in Europe! The Slavs leave, the Albanians stay...the future Kosovo-style crises is beginning to brew...and whose fault it this?

This, Mr. Ivanov should be told, is the dynamite under the foundations of your multi-ethnic country: while you are busy creating and defending THE BIG LIE, you seem to have forgotten the big lessons of the collapse of Yugoslavia: "It's the Economy, Stupid!" Once people start going hungry, no lies will stand in front of their children's future and their family's survival!

In the same article we see mention of the Albanian minority and some of its concerns, which led in 1991 to an armed uprising. I would dare suggest that maybe the anti-Albanian riots in Monastir/Bitola and extreme pseudo-Makedonism is what led the Albanians to feel as second rate citizens in a "Macedonian state". Maybe I am wrong, but I will need to see some strong proof, because arguments like that "the assumption that Macedonia would join NATO" was going to act as a "guarantee of internal stability", sounds to me like empty talk. "It would give us medicine for our hot heads," said Menduh Tachi, leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Albanians." we read in the article. That is a remote possibility, I suppose, but we need to distinguish between what the leader of a political Party says, and what his constituents in the street say. The Albanian in the street needs a job, he needs a police that is not engaged in ethnic brutality and he needs a future, for him, for his family. People do not simply get to the guns and start a revolt unless they feel desperate that their future is taken from them. What does NATO have to do with the INTERNAL stability of FYROM and the Albanian issue? An argument can be convincingly be made for the EXTERNAL stability, but not the internal

In Mr. Whitlock's article we are told that "Macedonians say the name of the country is crucial to developing their still wobbly national identity." This is interesting. Greeks do not have a "wobbly" national identity, Serbs or Albanians do not either. They know who they are. Is it maybe because the so called "Macedonian" have been given a fake identity, for the last sixty-odd years, a make-believe identity that has not stuck well with them? And why is it so important to sweep all the half baked inventions of Yugolavia's Titoism under a NATO woven rug of convenience, and have the neighbors deal with the INEVITABLY ugly aftermath, whenever (not if...) that comes? No...while FYROM's Titoist rebaptized nomenclatura may be just jolly and fine with the perpetuation of pseudo-Makedonism's BIG LIE; a BIG LIE from which they can keep their stranglehold on this poor country and its resources, and the future EU funds, ready for VMRO corruption and plunder, the people of the area deserve a better future than that: THEY DEMAND A FINAL RESOLUTION OF THIS BAD JOKE OF AN ISSUE!

Craig Whitlock informs us that "Ethnic Albanians say they would revolt if the Slavic Republic of Macedonia was the new name because they are not Slavs". I honestly wonder, whom is he trying to convince? Where is the logic in his argument? First of all Greeks never said they want a Slavic Republic of "Macedonia", they suggested Slavomacedonia, which includes the word Macedonia in a "syn-thetic" name. If the "Makedonci" claim to be "ethnic Macedonians", and they want to call their name "Macedonia", their supposed name, then where do the Albanians fit into this? By the "Ethnic Macedonian" formula, the Albanians are NOT considered Macedonians, so, then, if it is called Slavomacedonia, what difference will it make to the Albanians? Call it Japanese Macedonia, Chinese Macedonia if you like, it still does not make any difference to the Albanians. If anything, the so called "Albanian" argument against Slavomacedonia, inevitably leads to a PURELY GEOGRAPHIC, purely non-ethnic, neutral name, that excludes nobody! Yes or no? If we try to be logical, we need to start making sense after some point, and not simply regurgitate arguments thrown arround by others with greater interests and bigger knifes to grind.

Towards the end we are given the argument of a hard liner Slavmacedonian big hat, a certain "Todor Petrov, president of the World Macedonian Congress" obviously some ultra-nationalist emigre', who "said the country should stop kowtowing to Greece and just call itself the Republic of Macedonia, regardless of how badly it wants to join NATO or the European Union." Perfect...and why should this gentleman give a hoot about whether "his" country joins the European Union and sees untold amounts of investment flow in that will create jobs for his "co-patriots"? Simply because, technically, I assume, he is not even THEIR compatriot. he does not live their misery and poverty. He is probably sitting in his office somewhere in Toronto, Sydney or Indianapolis, and he makes a comfortable living away from them. All he cares about is HIS identity as an emigre, which is light years away from the identity of the person on the ground in FYROM, the average unemployed SlavoMacedonian man who sells his family's "Makedonskata" identity for a EU passport that says EUROPEAN UNION outside in golden letter over red.

Then, and here the article becomes suspect of being more like a paid lobbyists stroke of genius rather than genuine journalism, we are quoted the same gentleman, Todor Petrov who "In an interview, he accused Greece of "practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide on the Macedonian nation" for the past 100 years. "They're denying our nationality and culture and church and history and our borders," he said." Really, now? I have seen photographs of Jews in crematoria and piles of corpses in Nazi concentration camps. I have seen pictures of beheaded Armenians, men women and children, in Turkey, during WWI, but I have still to see a photo of Greek Genocide against the "Macedonian" "nation".

Journalism, I would expect, demands fairness and balance. How can the rumblings of an ultra-nationalist emigre be given space to defame the Greeks through an imaginary BIG LIE, (which by the way is a very recent invention, they have come up witht hsi "genocide theory" post 2000) without allowing the reader the chance to hear so much as even a question mark on this? But lest I forget, did anyone notice what this Titoist nationalist just say at the end of his sentence? Let us revisit his uttering:

"They're denying our nationality and culture and church and history and our borders," he said." Your borders? Which borders? The United Macedonia borders? Where do your borders start and where do they end? Is the so called "Aegean Macedonia" (they will never be caught alive saying Greek Macedonia, so they invented the misnomer :"Aegean Macedonia") part of the borders you feel the Greeks are denying you?

Then the juicy fruits start coming one by one: "It is not just Macedonia's national identity that is at stake. The Greek government does not recognize ethnic minorities within its own borders, including Macedonian-speaking residents of northern Greece."

We are even offered the distinguished opinion of a very important gentleman: "Pavle Voskopoulos, a Greek citizen who leads the Rainbow Party, a group of ethnic Macedonians in northern Greece, said the country subscribes to a myth of a "pure" Greek people who are directly descended from Alexander and others from his era. "This is all about modern Greek identity," he said. "If there is a Macedonia as an independent state, this is a great threat against Greek policy and Greek ideology."

I grew up in Greece and went through most of my formative years there and that included even the years under the ludicrous colonels' Junta. I do not recall anyone teaching me about a "pure" Greek nation, yet I see our friends from Skopje repeatedly accusing Greeks of this very same myth. Greeks since antiquity know that it is not blood lines that make a nation, but common living, commonality in culture and common interests. though it sounds like a puzzle to others from outside, Americans do constitute a nation, and so do Australians and Canadians. There are subgroups that is for sure, but there is unity in diversity. Greek are the same.

Ancient Greeks were a dynamic mix of local Pelasgians, and other local tribes, Indo-European speaking Greeks, who arrived in Greece around 2000 BC, and as time went by they mixed with slaves, and others who came as a result of Alexander's expeditions in Asia, and later with Romans, Thracians, etc. Greek culture has been evolving the last 4000 years and it is the language that more than anything (religion too, to a smaller of greater degree, depending on the historic frame) that makes their nation. Who ever talked about racial purity? Only Dog breeders and Nazis are thinking in these terms. As for Pavlos Voskopoulos, the leader of the Party of the Ethnic Macedonians of Greece, I will ask the readers permission to copy here what I recently wrote in another recent article on this issue, about the political Party Mr Voskopoulos leads:

"When Ouranio Toxo/Ουράνιο Τόξο - Vinozhito (Raibow) a political Party representing the "ethnic Macedonians" slated candidates under the banners of the European Free Alliance (Eyropaiki Eleytheri Symmachia – Ouranio Toxo) for the in June 2009 Europarliament, the total votes tally they were able to receive in the districts of Macedonia were two thousand five hundred ninety four votes (2594), out of a population of 2.5 million Greek Macedonians

( http://ekloges-prev.singularlogic.eu/e2009/pages/index.html?lang=en ).

This is hardly making a case for allowing one third of Greece, Macedonia, to be split and given as a land grant to the FYROM ultra-nationalists in Skopje.

By comparison, the Komma Ellinon Kynigon (Fysi - Kynigi - Psarema - Paradosi)/Party of Greek Hunters (Nature -Hunting - Fishing - Tradition), the quintessential joke of a party in Greece, in the very same districts (Districts of Drama, Kavala, A' Thessalonikis, B' Thessalonikis, Serres, Chalkidiki, Kilkis, Pella, Imathia, Pieria, Florina, Kozani, Kastoria and Grevena) received 5900 votes, twice as many as Eyropaiki Eleytheri Symmachia – Ouranio Toxo / Vinozhito.

( http://ekloges-prev.singularlogic.eu/e2009/pages/index.html?lang=en ).

We are given here the opinion of the leader of a Party that was able to gather less than one vote per thousand people in Greek Macedonia supporting their cause, although they had tv time, and freedom to say whatever they wanted, yet they managed to gather half the votes of the hunter's party! What minority are we talking about then? the best statistics may be talking of some fifty thousand bilingual people who speak Slavic ALSO, besides Greek. And that is true especially of the older generations, but that again makes no difference: it is identity that counts, not language not blood, not anything else. Several, though not all, Muslim Slavs in Greece (Pomaks) consider themselves to be Turkish though they speak no word in Turkish. And Many Jews worldwide think of themselves as Jews though they speak no Hebrew. These are instances where one part of the identity, the religious one, overcomes language and other aspects of culture. I have met not a few Americans who are Greek Orthodox in religion and Greek in culture and identity, though they speak no word in Greek, and they revel in their double identity as both Americans and Greeks. It is self identity that counts. It is who and what you want to be. A huge part of identity, sometimes even primary, is of course language, but not the only one. A bilingual person can always chose the identity he prefers. Many families in pre-war Macedonia were split in half when one brother would decide to "became" a Bulgarian ("ethnic Macedonians" had not been invented yet) and another to "became" a Greek. A bilingual of Macedonia who speaks both Greek and Slavic, but considers himself to be a Greek and derogatorily calls the people across the frontiers "Yugoslavs", cannot be counted as one of Mr. Voskopoulos's voters or "ethnic minority" supporters. A Cuban-American in Miami, is typically a fully bilingual Spanish and English speaking, and while he has a strong Spanich/Cuban identity is also at the same time very much an American.

The Washington Post article continues by informing us that FYROM "has renamed its national stadium for King Philip II, Alexander's father, and organized dozens of archaeological digs." It is not what you dig out that matters to Greeks, but the language found written in the artifacts, and the culture that created these artifacts. Claiming for example prehistoric stone-age artifacts as "proof" of an age-long continuum of (Slavo)"Macedonian" culture is as ludicrous as naming Greek funerary, religious and political Greek inscriptions "ancient-Macedonian" epigraphy. The Zenith of "Fyromian-antiquization" kitsch is displayed in the governing Palace in Skopje, where a series of priceless ancient Greek statues have been arranged with total disregard to their care, on the sidewalk, as proof of "ancient Macedonian" art. Similarly, a huge Greek inscription which mentions the Makedonarchs (leaders of Macedonia) has been hauled from the Archaeological site and taken to decorate the entry to Mr. Gruevski's Gubernatorial building.

"Officials", we are reminded, "also like to needle Greeks that the philosopher Aristotle, who tutored the teenage Alexander, was from the kingdom of Macedonia, not Athens". This is a true statement: Athens was not Greece, Athens was IN Greece. Macedonia was in Greece too. The fact that someone was from Macedonia, like Aristotle, does not make him any less a Greek than someone from Athens as someone from Sparta or Hellenistic Egypt or Syracuse in southern Italy. the fact that Eratosthenes was from Egypt does not make him an Arab, since Arabs came into Egypt seven Hundred years after him. He was Greek. The fact that Archimedes was from Syracuse, does not make him a Roman, he was a Greek who was in fact killed by a Roman during the capture of his country, his city state by the Romans. And after all, Aristotle is not known for simply being Alexander's tutor...he is the man that established the scientific method and one of the two pillars, along with Plato, of ancient Greek Philosophy. And there is no question as to what language he wrote in. If he was a "Slavo-Makedonski" Macedonian, why did he not write in Slavic? The Romans were brutes and uneducated in the beginning yet when they started writing they wrote in their own language, Latin. Where is that elusive language of the Macedonians, the ancient conquerors of the known world, the language of Alexander, Philip II and Aristotle, if it was not the Greek they left us in their incriptions?

The fact that there are plenty of pseudo-scientists in FYROM, like the Archaeologist "Pasko Kuzman, the government's director of cultural heritage" who prostitute their allegiance to science for the sake of pseudo-scientific political ends, is not surprising. Hitler found doctors who killed their fellow humans in order to execute SS-ordered human "experiments". I would never call Pasko Kuzman an SS officer, far from it (though I have no problem describing some of his political bosses in VMRO as such). No, his description "as a cross between Indiana Jones and Santa Claus" goes along way to create a good picture of him, but I would definitely add a bit of Goebbels into the mix: it is the BIG LIE "thing"...with which he has been raised, in Tito's Yugoslavia and from which, like a second skin, he cannot get out of.

Someone could easily claim that Greeks are too emotionally involved to be credible, when speaking of ancient Macedonia. I can say that this might be correct with some. On the other hand, the facts are facts and nobody can escape from them, not even FYROM government's own "director of cultural heritage". Then, who would be the best to expose the falacy and fakeness of pseudoMacedonist theories? None other than the ex prime minister of the country, i suppoze, Ljupco Georgievski, who abandoned Pseudomakedonism and went to maika Bulgaria and got a Bulgarian passport, remembering that his grandparents were all Bulgarian, after all. This is how the ex-Prime Minister countered Pasko Kuzman's nebulous theories, logically and point to point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HvKPiLYZCI&NR=1

But in Craig Whitlock's interview, the professor had other things to say:

"The Greeks are sorry that they are called Greece and not Macedonia," he said. "What else can I tell you?"

Don't say anything professor...polla eipas/πολλά είπας and, as Aristotle, that timeless Macedonian philosopher said: "ouk en to pollo to eu"/"ούκ εν τώ πολλώ τό εύ"!...I do not need to translate what he said, you are eis Makedon/είς Μακεδών/a Macedonian, as you claim; I am sure you can read Aristotle in the original...

Then, after you finish Aristotle, please go and read what 350 Classics professors world wide are saying, on the Macedonia issue, in their Open Letter to President Obama:

http://macedonia-evidence.org/obama-letter.html

What was Pasko Kuzman's reply to that letter?

It is right here, on national tv:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tCgTJsRuW8

Alexander the Great: how Slavic was he?

27 January 2009

The real question is not whether Alexandre trhe Great was Greek or not. He has. The real question is whether the Slavic invaders to the Balkans during the 7th century AD, more than one thousand years after Alexandre, can claim today any other nationality than Slavic and have the right to hold any other passport than Bulgarian. And the answer is simply NO.

Prof. Paul Cartledge, Cambridge University -

Nation-state building in its most urgent form was a particularly prominent 19th-century phenomenon. Small proto-states then were seeking to get out from under the stifling embrace of the big empires of the day - whether British, Turkish, French or Russian. But that process of political emancipation was not confined by any means to the 19th century; indeed, it continues, in places very strongly or even violently, to this day. And new nation-states that choose to base their essential identity on ethnicity, in order to determine who ‘the people’ are, tend to need heroes. Not least, they feel the need for founding-father type heroes from the past who can be seamlessly re-appropriated (and of course made over) as the nation’s living ancestors.

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - or just plain ‘Macedonia’, as it is known officially to its inhabitants and, more surprisingly, to George Bush’s United States of America - is exactly one such emergent ethnic nation-state of today in search of retrospective founding-father ancestors. Unfortunately, one of its ‘ancestors’ of choice, Alexander the Great, is already very well spoken for - in fact, most vigorously claimed and appropriated - by the neighbouring state of Greece. Though Greece began the process of independent nation-state building as early as the 1820s, it did not achieve its present geopolitical configuration until the 1940s, well within the living memory of its oldest generations. Hence it too is still not a little sensitive about its founding-father ancestors; and though it has a far huger pool to choose from than does FYROM, it too chooses to make a song and dance about Alexander as a true-blue Hellene, because the area of northern Greece centred on Greek Macedonia with its capital at Thessaloniki is the most ethnically diverse and the most ethnically contested in all the present-day Greek state. Therein lie the source, and the cause of its intensity, of the conflict between Greece and FYROM over the question of Alexander’s true ethnicity - a fundamentally historical question, but one that has become twisted out of all recognition by politics: just how Greek or Hellenic was he, really?

It’s very difficult today to classify precisely the language of the ancient Macedonians, because so few examples of it have been preserved. But two things about it are reasonably certain, or at least agreed among the experts. It was basically a dialect of Greek, but so interlarded with words of non-Greek, mainly Thracian origin that not just because of accent but also because of vocabulary it could be incomprehensible to speakers of ’standard’ Greek dialects. For example, Alexander himself when under the stress of huge emotion is recorded as speaking ‘in Macedonian’. The issue of difference of customs is also complex, but two features may be salient. Unlike Greeks elsewhere, both in mainland Greece and in the diaspora, the Macedonians had not developed a civilisation based on cities (poleis), and correspondingly they had not developed a strong political notion of citizenship. To try to convey an idea of this difference, scholars speak - however misleadingly - of Macedonian tribalism, even feudalism. That traditional way of doing politics was not significantly altered until only a couple of generations before Alexander the Great, in the late 5th century BCE.

Apart from the lack of citification, what would have astonished all other Greeks - except the Spartans perhaps - was the practice of royal polygamy. King Philip II, Alexander the Great’s father, amassed a collection of seven wives in all, only two of whom were Macedonian Greeks. Alexander’s own mother Olympias was a Greek Greek, as it were, a royal princess from Epirus. Elsewhere, monogamy was not just required for all Greeks - but also regarded as a defining feature of Greek as opposed to barbarian culture.

These linguistic and cultural differences could be exploited politically, then as now. Demosthenes of Athens complained you used not even to be able to buy a decent slave from Macedonia (implying it was a barbarian territory) whereas now Macedonia under Philip II lorded it over the rest of mainland Greece including Athens as if its subjects were barbarian slaves themselves. At the battle of Issus in Asia Minor in 333, Alexander’s difficulties in fighting the forces of the Persian king Darius III were compounded by the fact that many Greeks had enlisted as mercenaries on the side of Darius precisely because they hated Macedonians so.

My point in reminding readers of these ancient contentions over the ethnicity and meaning of ‘Macedonian’ is to emphasise how far the disputes were manufactured and exploited for political reasons, rather than based on scientific historical knowledge and understanding of the facts (such as they are and were). The same seems to me true today. On October the 28th 2007 the United Macedonian Diaspora organised a protest outside Parliament House in Canberra against FYROM’s assertion that Alexander was a (non-Greek) Macedonian. It is vital, I believe, that the Greek-Australian community’s response is measured, well articulated and clear. It is my view that neo-nationalist perspectives on ancient history do little to generate cohesion or cross-cultural harmony - particularly in immigrant nations such as Australia. I am also of the view that it is somewhat irrelevant whether Alexander was Greek or Macedonian according to any modern, retrospective, reappropriating notion of those terms. What matters is that he was a hugely significant leader, imbued with Hellenic values, but blessed also with a global and no less importantly multicultural perspective on the world.

I say ‘Greek or Hellenic’, because in English the very term ‘Greek’ is itself the result of ethnocentrism, a very ancient ethnocentrism admittedly, since it goes back to the ancient Romans, the Americans of their day. The Graikoi were indeed Greek - or Hellenic, as the Greeks themselves would have put it. They lived in Thessaly, the region immediately adjoining Greek Macedonia on the south. But they were small fry, bit-part players in the major ancient dramas. The ancient Greeks as a whole, who called themselves collectively ‘Hellenes’, would no more have considered calling themselves all ‘Graikoi’ than all Australians would today consider calling themselves Darwinites. Perhaps that’s another, historically conditioned reason why Greeks today or people of Greek descent, when speaking Greek insist so strongly that Macedonia is, was and always has been Greek, I mean Hellenic.

Yet, thereby hangs another irony, and another ancient one. Because even in ancient times there was a debate in Greece over the ethnicity of the Macedonians, that is over whether they were - or all of them were, and had always been - Greek (Hellenic Greek). This debate surfaces in Herodotus, at a critical moment in his account of the Graeco-Persian Wars. Ancient Macedonia, including a part of what is today FYROM, was then a subject province of the Persian empire, that empire’s European toehold or bridgehead. That was embarrassing enough for patriotic Greeks - but perhaps their consciences could be salved by saying that the Macedonians weren’t ‘really’ Hellenes? Herodotus was on the case, though only in retrospect of course. His enquiries led him to confirm the report he was given by the Macedonians themselves - that they were indeed Greek.

However - and it is a big ‘however’ - honesty compelled Herodotus to add that, when the Macedonian king of the day, another Alexander (Alexander the First), had applied to compete in the all-Greek and only-Greek Olympic Games, his fellow- competitors had objected that he was a ‘barbarian’ (non-Greek). But the judges of the Games, who were known as Hellenodikai or ‘Judges of the Hellenes’, had decided in his favour - on grounds of descent, as follows. The royal family to which Alexander belonged called themselves Argeadai, descendants of Argeas, and their family tradition held that Argeas, the ultimate founding father of their family line, took his name from Argos in the Peloponnese - indeed that he had originally emigrated from Argos to Macedonia to found the line. The Olympic Judges accepted that tradition as true. But - and again, it is a big ‘but’ - they did not then go on to declare that henceforth all Macedonians were entitled, as Hellenes, to compete in the Olympics. Entitlement was extended only to the royal Aegead family, not to all other Macedonians as well ….

Why so? Put it another way, why was there such dispute and discord, even among ancient Greeks, over the Hellenic identity and authenticity of the Macedonians? Even though, it has to be added, this dispute and discord flew in the face of very ancient Hellenic mythic genealogy, according to which Makedon, the eponymous forefather of all Macedonians, occupied an exalted position high up in the family-tree agreed on by all Hellenes. There were I think two main reasons. First, language, and second, customs - remembering that Herodotus, when he placed a definition of Greekness in the mouths of the Athenians, singled out precisely those two factors as crucially definitional.

Paul Cartledge is a Professor of Greek History at Cambridge University, and a fellow of Clare College. A world expert on Athens and Sparta in the Classical Age he has been described as a Laconophile. He was chief historical consultant for the BBC TV series The Greeks and the Channel 4 series The Spartans, presented by Bettany Hughes.
He has published The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others (2nd ed, 2002), the product of research into Greek self-definition; Kosmos: essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens (coauthor Millet, Paul.) (2002) Cambridge University Press; The Spartans: An Epic History (2nd ed, 2003); Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past (2004) Helots and Their Masters in Laconia and Messenia: Histories, Ideologies, Structures (2004) Center for Hellenic Studies.; Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World (2006). The Overlook Press.

source: hellenesonline.com