Giant Greek Tomb Discovered

schwit1 writes Archaeologists have uncovered the largest tomb ever discovered in Greece and think it is linked to the reign of Alexander the Great. "The tomb, dating to around 300 BC, may have held the body of one of Alexander's generals or a member of his family. It was found beneath a huge burial mound near the ancient site of Amphipolis in northern Greece. Antonis Samaras, Greece's prime minister, visited the dig on Tuesday and described the discovery as 'clearly extremely significant'. A broad, five-yard wide road led up to the tomb, the entrance of which was flanked by two carved sphinxes. It was encircled by a 500 yard long marble outer wall. Experts believe a 16ft tall lion sculpture previously discovered nearby once stood on top of the tomb."

Comments

meh

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be a requrement for people to include all of the measurments in metrics so people shouldn't be requred to dechipher how many feetsies are there in a yard and how much that is in crows wings, car tyres, pencil lenghts, cat paws etc.

Re:meh

[Sockatume]

You really should've called them out on calling it "BC" rather than "BCE" while you were at it. What's pedantry without thoroughness?

Re:meh

[amicusNYCL]

There's another article here, which contains this quote from the prime minister:

This is a monument with unique features: A surrounding peribolos of 497 meters, almost a perfect circle carved in Thassos marble. The Lion of Amphipolis is 5.20 meters high; let’s imagine it as being on the top of the tomb

That article also shows a picture with a partial glimpse of the entrance. This article from the same site has a picture of the lion, and the video down below is basically a slideshow of pictures of the tomb site. There's another article here with another exterior picture. The site of ancient Amphipolis is here, on the land surrounded by the river (you can zoom in and see the ruins of the acropolis). Based on the pictures in the articles, it looks like the tomb itself is just northeast of the site, here.

I'm not an archaeologist, I just play one on the internet.

Yes and no

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a requirement leaving primary school to be able to do a division. it is not a requirement to know what feet or yard or stones or furlong are. When you have an international audience, it is polite to use the international measurement methods that about 95% of the world use maybe put it in parenthesis near the medieval unit. like say 500 yards (about 450 meters).
 
This has an ecological impact by the way, because if thousand of people google "500 yards to meter" the electricity and time lost, would have been better spent on something else. If one person the submitter does it it is maybe 5 second lost to him and no big deal. If say 10000 persons do it, guessestimate international audience slashdot, that's 50000 seconds lost, electricity, bandwidth usage and so forth. Not a lot but cumulated over the years ? And jsut because the submitter does not want to make 1 step, he forces those loss on everybody else