IJDOD VI: Indiana Jones and the Tomb of Archimedes
- ptcrawford
- Apr 6
- 4 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
SPOILERS for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Passing through a French chateau, a Berlin-bound Nazi plunder train, a professor’s unhealthy obsession, a university archive, a Tangiers hotel, and the waters just off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera, the search for the second half of the eponymous ‘Dial of Destiny’ ultimately becomes a race to find the tomb of the great Sicilian Greek mathematician and inventor, Archimedes.
After being found in the second half of the shipwreck where the first part of the ‘dial’ had been discovered in 1901, the inscriptions on the “Grafikos” tablet, both wax and stone-carved, led Indiana Jones, Helena Shaw and their Nazi chasers on a search through the echoy ‘Ear of Dionysius’, complete with a sheer climb to bypass the original tomb entrance, an underground river, rickety bridge, insect infestation and an anachronistically (although storyline explained) decorated tomb.
The dates surrounding the mostly natural but partially man-made (due to it being a limestone quarry) ‘Ear of Dionysius’ are unclear, with the first mention of such a name not coming in surviving source material until 1608 by the painter Caravaggio, although there are ancient stories attached to it which would lead to the name.
However, this need for an intricate search for the tomb of Archimedes goes against the historical record. So annoyed and even distraught was Marcellus at the death – he referred to it as the ‘murder’ – of Archimedes, that he is said to have “buried him with splendour in his ancestral tomb, assisted by the noblest citizens and all the Romans” (John Tzetzes, Book of Histories II.145-147). And if it is correct that Archimedes was a kinsman of the great Syracusan king, Hiero II (Plutarch, Marcellus 14.7), then that ‘ancestral tomb’ could well have been quite splendid.
That said, 137 years after the death of Archimedes, his tomb had disappeared from public consciousness, with knowledge of its whereabouts so lost to the intervening years that the Syracusans seemingly even denied that it had even existed (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations V.64). But during his time as quaestor in Sicily in 75BC, Cicero himself sought out the tomb of Archimedes, not letting the Syracusan ignorance stop him. And beside the Agrigentine Gate, “completely surrounded and hidden by bushes of brambles and thorns” (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations V.64), he found it.
Cicero reports that he was only able to recognise it due to a rumour he had heard (or read about?) about how Archimedes’ tomb was inscribed by a some lines of verse and topped by a sphere and a cylinder, almost certainly referring to Archimedes’ working out of how to find the surface area of a sphere, its volume and various values for a cylinder it is contained within; work that was laid out in Archimedes’ treatise, On the Sphere and Cylinder, which appears to have been a favourite of his given that he seemingly asked for it to be inscribed and depicted on his tomb (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations V.65; cf. Plutarch, Marcellus 17.7). Cicero and leading Syracusans had the tomb uncovered, finding that only the first half of the verses were still visible, the second half having been worn away.
Unsurprisingly, Cicero almost breaks his own wrist in the process of patting himself on the back for overseeing this rediscovery.
“So one of the most famous cities in the Greek world, and in former days a great centre of learning as well, would have remained in total ignorance of the tomb of the most brilliant citizen it had ever produced, had a man from Arpinum not come and pointed it out!”
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations V.66
He does however highlight how the Romans had “limited the usefulness” (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations I.5) of mathematics to the point that they and their Syracusan counterparts seemingly had forgotten Archimedes and that someone could say “that Cicero’s act of respect in cleaning up Archimedes’ grave was perhaps the most memorable contribution of any Roman to the history of mathematics” (Simmons (1992) 38).
If Cicero did rediscover the tomb of Archimedes and have it restored to some prominence, it has since been lost once more. Several sites in/near modern Syracuse have some claim to being that of the tomb, but none appear correct.
One such claimed site is in the Grotticelle necropolis. The tomb claimed to be that of Archimedes in the Grotticelle does stand out from those around it; however, the reason for that is not because it has any of the features – verse, sphere, cylinder – described by Cicero in the tomb that he uncovered. Instead it stands out because it has a tympanum on top of its entrance – a triangular, recessed pediment, which will have originally housed a decorated scene.
Furthermore, rather than a tomb to be expected from 3rd century BC, this Grotticelle tomb is actually a columbarium, a Roman period burial edifice built to contain the cremated ashes of the dead in urns in wall recesses, at least 200 years after the death of Archimedes. Indeed, the name ‘Grotticelle’ literally meaning ‘little caves’ likely derives from the presence of columbarium in this necropolis.
Another purported site of the tomb of Archimedes is in the courtyard of the Hotel Panorama in Syracuse, A tomb was discovered during the hotel’s construction in the early 1960s and became associated with Archimedes, although more recently it has been suggested as possibly the tomb of Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse 317-289BC.
Perhaps it will need a “Grafikos” tablet to find the final resting place of Archimedes once more...
Bibliography
Simmons, G. F. Calculus Gems. New York (1992)
Simms, D.L. ‘The Trail for Archimedes's Tomb’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53 (1990) 281-286.
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