''King Philip II was the father of Alexander the Great. He suffered a
notorious penetrating wound by a lance through his leg
that was nearly fatal and left him lame in
339 B.C.E. (i.e., 3 y before his assassination in 336 B.C.E.). In 1977
and 1978
two male skeletons were excavated in the
Royal Tombs II and I of Vergina, Greece, respectively. Tomb I also
contained another
adult (likely a female) and a newborn
skeleton. The current view is that Philip II was buried in Tomb II.
However, the male
skeleton of Tomb II bears no lesions to
his legs that would indicate lameness. We investigated the skeletal
material of Tomb
I with modern forensic techniques. The
male individual in Tomb I displays a conspicuous case of knee ankylosis
that is conclusive
evidence of lameness. Right through the
overgrowth of the knee, there is a hole. There are no obvious signs that
are characteristic
of infection and osteomyelitis. This
evidence indicates that the injury was likely caused by a severe
penetrating wound to
the knee, which resulted in an active
inflammatory process that stopped years before death. Standard
anthropological age-estimation
techniques based on dry bone, epiphyseal
lines, and tooth analysis gave very wide age ranges for the male,
centered around
45 y. The female would be around 18-y-old
and the infant would be a newborn. It is concluded that King Philip II,
his wife
Cleopatra, and their newborn child are the
occupants of Tomb I''
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