The Causes Of "Alexander the great" Death

When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 B.C., his body didn’t begin to show signs of decomposition for a full six days, according to historical accounts.

To the ancient Greeks, this confirmed what they all thought about the young Macedonian king, and what Alexander believed about himself—that he was not an ordinary man, but a god

Just 32 years old, he had conquered an empire stretching from the Balkans to modern Pakistan and was poised on the edge of another invasion when he fell ill and died after 12 days of excruciating suffering. Since then, historians have debated his cause of death, proposing everything from malaria, typhoid, and alcohol poisoning to assassination by one of his rivals.

theories of what killed Alexander have focused on the agonizing fever and abdominal pain he

 suffered in the days before he died

In fact, she points out, he was also known to have developed a “progressive, symmetrical, ascending paralysis” during his illness. And though he was very sick, he remained compos mentis (fully in control of his mental faculties) until just before his death.

His death may be the most famous case of pseudothanatos, or false diagnosis of death, ever recorded.