For almost a century, the Octagon tomb in Ephesus has had archaeologists convinced it was the final resting place of Queen Arsinoe, younger sister of the legendary Queen Cleopatra. The Octagon was once a splendid monumen. Standing over 50 feet tall, it boasted papyri-bundle columns, motifs of Egypt, and its distinctive eight sides resembled the eight-sided structure of the Lighthouse of Pharos in Alexandria. Austrian scientists examined the skeleton found in the burial chamber beneath the ruins of the monument, but the skull was missing. Lost in Germany in the chaos of the Second World War.
Until December 2022, that is. The skull was unearthed, and the report on it was published last month. The most damning piece of evidence? It belongs to a young boy with ancestry from the Italian Peninsula or Sardinia. In all likelihood, the son of a high-ranking Roman politician or military leader.
At first, I didn’t necessarily believe that, either. The only reliable indicator of sex is the pelvis. Or so I thought. A female pelvis has a much wider pelvic arch and shallower cavity to enable an infant’s cranium to pass through it during childbirth. But the team that analyzed the skull conducted genetic tests and matched them with a rib and a femur from the skeleton, and found them to have XY chromosomes.
Teeth are a fascinating insight into a person’s age, heritage and lifestyle. Since the last time I touched on this topic, I’ve fallen head over heels down the dental rabbit hole, which is why this report was so fascinating. The German archeologist who removed the skull from the tomb in 1929 remarked that the remains appeared to have belonged to a person who came from wealth because of their good health.
The Dental Records
After analyzing the skull, some of the teeth appeared unworn, as if they had never occluded with their antagonists. Others showed fracture lines running the length of the root, causing alveolar bone resorption on the buccal wall. This essentially means that the cranium’s owner didn’t have a functional bite. Some teeth took excessive force and others took none at all. But our teeth are supposed to spread the forces of mastication across all of their surfaces to better absorb the force.
It’s quite common now to help guide teeth into their natural place. As life has gotten easier, our diets have gotten softer and our jaws have gotten smaller. Our dental arches have narrowed, leaving less space for teeth to erupt into their correct position. This may be exactly what happened to the inhabitant of the Octagon.
Furthermore, after our permanent teeth erupt, the roots take several more years to finish developing. The maxillary first premolars erupt between 10-11 years old and root formation completes 2-4 years later. The roots were fully formed but not yet fully mineralized. The maxillary second molars erupt between 11-12 years old, and the roots were not yet fully formed. Furthermore, the crypt in the bone where the crown of the third molar was starting to form was evident. This indicates that the cranium’s owner was even younger than Fabian Kanz’s team believed. Instead of a 16-17 year old, the dental records indicate that the person buried under the Octagon was in fact only 13-14 years old. Again, far too young to be Arsinoe.
So, now we know that it wasn’t Arsinoe who was buried in the Octagon. But she lived the last five years of her life in Ephesus, so she must be out there, somewhere. And who was buried in the Octagon?