Image Credentials: Image Title: The Hand of Octavian: When Alexander’s Immortality Met Rome’s First Emperor Source: (Gemini) Date: December 2025. Attribution: This image was created using AI-generated imagery (Gemini) and does not depict a real-world scene.
By Madison Walker
The last wish of Alexander the Great was explicitly morbid, to have his body thrown into the river, allowing his corpse to vanish and, in doing so, perpetuate the myth that he had been raptured to the side of the god Ammon, his alleged divine father.
Yet, his generals had other plans for the King of Kings. After his death in 323 B.C., it took two years to design and construct a funerary cart grand enough to convey his mummified body to a suitable tomb. Though perhaps initially destined for Aegae, the Macedonian capital, the cortege was intercepted in Syria by Ptolemy, who diverted the body to Egypt. After an initial burial in Memphis, Alexander’s body was eventually moved to a celebrated tomb at the major crossroads of Alexandria, the city he founded.
Alexander’s body was treated with immense reverence—and perhaps, an unusual lack of decay. The historian Plutarch records an incredible account from the days immediately following the King’s death:
“The king’s body had been lying in the coffin for six days… when Alexander’s friends eventually found time to attend to his corpse, the men who entered the tent saw that no decay had set into it and that there was not even the slightest discoloration.”
This initial, astonishing state of preservation cemented the legend of Alexander’s body, ensuring that for centuries, emperors, kings, and conquerors sought to pay their respects.
The most famous of these imperial visits came in 30 B.C. Shortly after the suicide of Queen Cleopatra VII, Octavian (the future Emperor Augustus) arrived in Alexandria. He was ushered into the tomb, where he placed flowers and a golden diadem upon Alexander’s mummified head.
But merely viewing the relic was not enough for the ambitious Roman. The 3rd-century historian Cassius Dio relates that Octavian reached out and ran his hands over the centuries-old flesh. The gesture of admiration turned disastrous: Octavian was evidently not gentle enough with the ancient remains, for a piece of Alexander’s nose reportedly broke off at his touch, leaving the future Augustus looking suitably sheepish.
The tomb remained a site of pilgrimage for nearly two centuries more. The last confirmed imperial visit was by Emperor Caracalla in 215, who paid his respects shortly before embarking on a brutal slaughter of at least 30,000 Alexandrian citizens, and not long before he was ignominiously stabbed to death while urinating by the side of a road.
By 270 A.D., the tomb was likely damaged and perhaps looted amidst the political disturbances that ravaged the city under the reign of Aurelian. When the Arabs conquered Alexandria, they held no interest in preserving pagan or polytheistic relics, prioritizing the famous library’s books for heating the bathhouses over six months, according to one account. Alexander’s tomb was not a priority.
But a compelling, long-shot theory exists for Alexander’s final resting place. Alexandria was also the burial site of the Christian gospel writer, St. Mark, patron saint of Venice. In 828 A.D., Venetian merchants, seeking the relics of St. Mark, traveled to Alexandria. They dug up what they believed to be the Saint’s remains, famously hiding them under a layer of pork and cabbage leaves to deter Muslim guards, and reburied them under St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice.
The theory suggests that in the dark, frantic removal, the Venetians may have mistakenly exhumed the wrong set of remains. Is it possible that the greatest conqueror in history now rests, unrecognized, beneath the glorious golden mosaics of St. Mark’s Basilica? The question ensures that the myth of Alexander the Great’s immortal body continues to echo across history.