'The large complex was at first thought to have been a roman temple, but a more thorough search of the area enabled the team of Scottish scientists working on the site, to determine it was actually a mausoleum. It took the team more than five weeks of research to finally locate and recover the sarcophagus, entirely carved out of a single block of granite.
King Pellinore is a well-known character of the Arthurian legend and was not, until now, believed to have been based on an historical person. He is most famous for his endless hunt of the Questing Beast, a strange creature has the head and neck of a snake, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion and the feet of a hart. He is said to have been actively tracking this monster when King Arthur first meets him. He is also known for breaking the sword Arthur had withdrawn from the stone, while beating the king in a joust.
This puzzling new find is already raising a lot of questions among the scientific community. Modern scholarship has generally assumed that there was some actual person at the heart of the legends, though not of course a king with a band of knights in shining armor. Most experts agreed that it was likely based on some warlord who gained fame as a warrior battling the Germanic invaders of the late fifth and early sixth centuries, while some experts thought the story was entirely fictitious. O.J. Padel for example, in “The Nature of Arthur“, argues that “historical attributes of just the kind that we find attached to King Arthur can be associated with a figure who was not historical to start with.” The discovery of this new tomb, if it proves authentic, could bring a surprising end to a centuries old debate concerning the authenticity of the story, and give rise to a whole new wave of archaeological digsites.'
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