Travels with Alexander the Great

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http://www.mondotv.it/en_mondo/mondo_en/TVSeriesEN_Source/Alexander/Alexander1.html

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Egyptian demonstrators demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak gather on the statue of
Alexander the Great on January 28.

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More than 2000 years ago Alexander was welcomed into Egypt as a liberator from oppressive Persian rule. The Persians had exploited the country’s grain reserves, over-taxed its people and also failed to respect Egypt's ancient religious traditions.He was declared the “Son of Zeus” by Egyptian priests of Amun at the site of the Oracle at Siwa Oasis. Alexander founded Alexandria which would later become the prosperous capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty after his death when Egypt  became his final resting place.

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Always a devout man who began each day with sacrifices to the gods, Alexander had no difficulty worshipping the Egyptian deities. Equating their gods with his own, he worshipped the Egyptian Amun as a form of Zeus. At the Memphite necropolis of Sakkara the new pharaoh offered sacrifices to the Apis bull, cult animal of the creator god Ptah, followed by Greek-style games and literary contests in which performers from all over the Greek world took part in a multi-cultural extravaganza. These kind of events mark the beginnings of Hellenism in their blending of Greek practices and local traditions, and Egypt and Greece would successfully co-exist for the next 3 centuries.

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Alexander was anointed as Pharaoh in Memphis on 14 November 332 BC.

In the two months he resided as 'living god' in the royal palace at Memphis, studying Egyptian laws and customs at first hand, he gave orders for the restoration of the Egyptians' religious centers, including the great southern temples of Luxor and Karnak, where he appears in the company of the Egyptian gods wearing traditional Egyptian regalia including the rams horns of Amun as worn by his pharaonic predecessors including Amenhotep III. Alexander's image was replicated all over Egypt in both monumental statuary and delicate relief, together his with his Greek name translated into hieroglyphs enclosed by the royal cartouche:

"Horus, the strong ruler, he who seizes the lands of the foreigners, beloved of

Amun and the chosen one of Ra - meryamun setepenra Aleksandros".

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Temple of Alexander the Great, Bahariya, Valley of the Golden Mummies, Egypt

The temple of Alexander the Great located in the Bahariya Oasis has the distinction of being the Macedonian ruler's only known temple in Egypt. The temple was built during Alexander's lifetime and dedicated to Amun and Horus. It is believed by some Egyptologists that the Greek conqueror passed through Bahariya while returning from the oracle of Ammon at Siwa Oasis.

http://www.guardians.net/hawass/Valley_of_the_Golden_Mummies.htm

http://www.crystalinks.com/bahariya.html

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Two great historians discuss Megalexandros

The conversation continues here:

Part 6 - http://blogs.forbes.com/booked/2011/01/28/two-great-historians-talk-alexander-the-great-part-6/

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Arrian's Alexander the Great - In a New Voice

Thursday, February 10, 2011
6:00 PM EST

(90 minute panel and Q&A - followed by a reception at New York University's Center for Ancient Studies)

To celebrate the newly published Landmark edition of Arrian's biography of Alexander the Great, the NYU Center for Ancient Studies and the Reading Odyssey are hosting an evening conference aimed at exploring why the writings of Arrian are central to our understanding of Alexander the Great and how the new Landmark edition will expand our understanding of Arrian.

http://arrian2011.eventbrite.com/

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This is the book of the major new BBC2 series which explores the history of western civilization from around 5000 BC to the fall of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD including Tyre, Carthage, Greece, the conquests of Alexander, and the rise of Rome.

Across the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Nile Delta, awe-inspiring, monstrous ruins are scattered across the landscape - vast palaces, temples, fortresses, shattered statues of ancient gods, carvings praising the eternal power of long-forgotten dynasties. These ruins - the remainder of thousands of years of human civilization - are both inspirational in their grandeur, and terrible in that their once teeming centres of population were all ultimately destroyed and abandoned.

Richard Miles recreates these extraordinary cities to understand the roots of human civilization. His challenge is to make us understand that the cities which define culture, religion and economic success and which are humanity's greatest invention, have always had a cruel edge to them, building systems that have provided both amazing opportunities and back-breaking hardship. Miles is fascinated by the compromises that make the city work - the mixture of coercion and desire, ceremony and justice, the great public and private spaces created and recreated across the ancient world that defined the focus and meaning of human civilization.

In episode 4 of his TV programme also called Ancient Worlds, Miles, looks at how Alexander and his successors exported Greek ideas and culture to the wider world. Here is one reviewer’s comments:

Television programmes about Alexander the Great don’t come along very often, so it has been a pleasure to watch episode 4 of Ancient Worlds on BBC’s iPlayer. The programme, presented by Richard Miles, looked at how Alexander and his successors exported Greek ideas and culture to the wider world. The answer? Firstly, by the tip of a point. But not of a sword, rather, a sarissa.

Up until the reign of Alexander’s father, Philip II, and the introduction of the sarissa into the Macedonian army, hoplite warfare resembled a very primitive rugby scrum – the two armies met and there was lots of pushing and shoving. The blood-letting only properly started when one army took fright and either tried to run or fell over. The sarissa’s extreme length – some five metres – made the soldiers wielding it both dangerous – their weapon could penetrate two men – and almost invulnerable, especially when they were packed together in a phalanx. The scrum was replaced by an organised and lethal march forward.

In one of the stand out moments of the programme, Richard Miles actually handles a real sarissa to show its size. I was surprised at the fact that it was bendy. I always imagined it to be as stiff as the javelin that mediaeval jousters held! Once Alexander came to power, he destroyed Thebes (no mention was made by Miles of the interesting fact that one house was allowed to remain standing – that of the poet Pindar, whom Alexander admired) and subjugated Greece (with the exception of Sparta). He then set off for Persia. Miles describes his campaign against the Persian Empire as a ‘conquest by blitzkrieg’. Of necessity, the programme passed lightly over Alexander’s journey (for a more detailed account, I can recommend Michael Woods’ In the Footsteps of Alexander) until it reached the Battle of Issus, which Miles describes as Alexander’s greatest victory to date. In the blink of an eye, however, we come to the greatest of all: Gaugamela. I have always pronounced this Gau (rhyming with cow) – ga – mela (to rhyme with bella), but Miles pronounces it Gor – ga – me – la. He may be right, but I think my pronunciation sounds nicer. Anyway, Gaugamela saw the last defeat of the Persian Empire and soon after, the death of Darius. As I mentioned above, Ancient Worlds is about the transportation of Greek ideas and culture, in short, Greek civilisation. In his harshest criticism* of Alexander, Miles said that the burning of Persepolis, which took place subsequent to Gaugamela, showed Alexander to be a destroyer of civilisation rather than the creator of one. Given the programme’s raison d’être this is damning criticism. Alexander’s propagandists must have known the burning was bad news, so arranged for Ptolemy’s courtesan, Thais, takes the rap for persuading the king to torch it.

Persepolis really marks the end of Miles’ interest in Alexander’s campaigns and he moves quickly on to Babylon in 323 BC and the king’s death, which according to Miles was recorded thus by a Babylonian weather watcher: “The king died. Clouds.”. Very laconic. I wonder if the weatherman was a Spartan,

http://myrmicatforever.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/ancient-worlds-richard-miles/

*Actually this is not the harshest criticism Miles makes of Alexander. In his book he dismisses his whole Asian enterprise as “ephemeral, quixotic and futile” and ascribes the success of Hellenistic civilisation to his successors. Strange really. Without Alexander, his successors wouldn’t have had a Hellenistic Empire to administer in the first place. They would probably still be doing tours of duty slogging along the Thracian border. - ed.

More on the sarissa here:

http://scottthong.wordpress.com/tag/sarissa/

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The Alexandrian model of globalisation
By Evaggelos Vallianatos

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11521&page=0

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The Alexandrian model of globalisation
By Evaggelos Vallianatos

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11521&page=0

Thanks for that Tony.

As well as spreading Greek culture it is believed Alexander also aimed to open up trade routes between East and West. Some historians think that the reason he commissioned Nearchus to explore the coastline between India and Persia was to open up a sea route between the two countries.

The expansion of Alexander's empire into Central Asia is seen as the first major step in opening the Silk Road between the East and the West. At entry to the Fergana Valley in Tajikistan he founded the city of Alexandria Eschate or "Alexandria The Furthest" which later became a major staging point on the northern Silk Route. Alexander's successors, the Ptolemies in Egypt, also actively promoted trade with Mesopotamia, India, and East Africa through their Red Sea ports and over land.

Unlike Vallianatos, IMO there are potential benefits of globalised trade as well as drawbacks in that is can help poorer nations out of poverty - but it can also drag everyone down as we saw in the GFC.

It is interesting how commentators from many different fields and with many different viewpoints see Alexander as somehow still relevant to today's world as the above article demonstrates. Philip Freeman, as a further example, predicts in the article linked below that "If Alexander were to march into Egypt today, it isn't hard to imagine what he would do. The leading members of the old regime would be on the next flight to Saudi Arabia and the young king himself would be at the barricades passing out bread, praying at the mosques, and promising change."

Full article here:

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110203/OPINION01/102030335/Guest-opinion-What-would-Alexander-do-in-Egypt-today-?BUSINESS04