Description : Aegae or Aigai (Ancient Greek: Αἰγαὶ), also Aegeae or Aigeai (Αἰγέαι), was a city in Emathia in ancient Macedonia, and the burial-place of the Macedonian kings. The commanding and picturesque site upon which the town was built was the original centre of the Macedonians, and the residence of the dynasty which sprang from the Temenid Perdiccas. The seat of government was afterwards transferred to the marshes of Pella, which lay in the maritime plain beneath the ridge through which the Lydias forces its way to the sea. But the old capital always remained the national hearth (ἑστία, Diod. Excerpt. p. 563) of the Macedonian race, and the burial-place for their kings. The body of Alexander the Great, though by the intrigues of Ptolemy I Soter, it was taken to Memphis, was to have reposed at Aegae, – the spot where his father Philip II of Macedon fell by the hand of Pausanias of Orestis.Its site is located near the modern town of Vergina.
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