Has Hephaestion's Grave Been Found?

Jared Leto as Hephaestion

I love history and I've read everything I can get my hands on about Alexander the Great and by extension, Hephaestion, Alexander's life long friend, second in command of the empire for a time,  and many believe Alexander's lover.  It is well documented that when Hephaestion died, Alexander was inconsolable and his mourning was extreme.  Alexander's own tomb which was in Alexandria, Egypt under the Ptolemaic dynasty, has been lost, but now some suggest that Hephaestion's tomb may have been discovered.  Discovery has details.  Here are excerpts:

A skeleton has emerged from the Alexander the Great-era tomb in Amphipolis in northern Greece, according to a news announcement by the Greek Ministry of Culture on Wednesday.

At least one archaeologist has suggested that the remains, if male, could belong to Hephaestion, a close friend and possible lover of Alexander the Great -- or someone like him.

Archaeologists led by Katerina Peristeri found the human remains in a box-shaped grave. The 10.6 by 5.1-foot limestone burial was found at about 5.3 feet beneath the floor of the third chamber in the massive tomb site.

According to Dorothy King, a classical archaeologist not involved in the excavation, . . . . noted the finding points to the deceased being someone uniquely important.  “A burial like this in a sarcophagus, a whole body rather than a box with ashes, is unusual in Macedonia,” King told Discovery News.

According to the scholar, most people who died abroad were buried in foreign land and only very important people like Alexander and Hephaestion, Alexander the Great’s close friend and possible lover, were embalmed to be returned.

“I think that if the bones are male, they are most likely to be those of someone like Hephaestion,” King wrote in her blog.

“The remains show that the sarcophagus was very elaborate and made of precious materials, as the sources say his funerary cortege was,” she added.

Hephaestion was a Macedonian nobleman and a battlefield general in the army of Alexander and was Alexander’s closest friend since childhood. The two were tutored under Aristotle.

Although more than one historian has suggested that the handsome Hephaestion had a physical relationship with his emperor, no contemporary source states that Alexander and Hephaestion were lovers.

Yet, according to Guy MacLean Rogers, professor of history at Wellesley College and the author of "Alexander: The Ambiguity of Greatness," modern sexual categories like homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual did not exist at the time.

Whatever the nature of their relationship, when Hephaestion died in Ecbatana (modern Hamadan) in western Iran in October 324 B.C., Alexander mourned his loss by shaving his own hair, not eating for days, executing Hephaestion's doctor, and commissioning an expensive funeral.

King on her blog also notes in part as follows:

I have been wondering for a while whether Hephaestion could also have been buried at Amphipolis. The size to me makes people like Nearchos unlikely, and whilst the idea that it was built for Alexander the Great is still the most likely possibility now that most other suggestions have been discarded, the one other possibility has been Hephaestion. 

Alexander the Great modeled himself on his hero Achilles, and visited his tomb at Achilleion. Achilles had Patroclus, and Alexander had Hephaestion.

Hephaestion died before Alexander, and Alexander ordered his body returned to Macedonia in an elaborate funerary cortege to be buried in a magnificent tomb there. We know that if the tomb had been started, Perdiccas cancelled work on it once Alexander died (here).

Also we know that Alexander ordered a cult to Hephaestion - not as an important god like Alexander, but still honours and so forth.

In Egypt the cult of Alexander is very well attested, and Hephaestion was often honoured alongside him.

So that's why I think that if the bones are male, they are most likely to be those of someone like Hephaestion.