Travels with Alexander the Great

[magicmountain]

This volume examines the legacy of Alexander, the Macedonian, as it survived and transformed itself in literature, the arts and archaeology in Asia. The tendency to idealise Alexander began in antiquity and by the Roman period, a body of romance and grown around him, which continued to expand in almost every language from Scotland to Mongolia. The portrait of Alexander as the universal conqueror who was also the civiliser and benefactor of mankind owes its origin to Plutarch who wrote in the early centuries AD and has been extraordinarily potent in shaping modern views of Alexander.

The legacy itself has been surprisingly tenacious and continued well into the present, as it became the guiding star of nineteenth and twentieth century British archaeologists in the Indian subcontinent, such as Alexander Cunningham, John Marshal, etc. in their search for cities established by Alexander and of the entire development of Gandharan art, which was considered Buddhist in nature, but Greek in form. The larger question that this book addresses in the creation of cultural memory and its persistence or appropriation through time as it establishes an almost parallel perspective on the past. The book will be of interest to historians, archaeologists, art historians and all those interested in Alexander's journey through Asia.

Click link below and scroll down to Introduction which provides some interesting reading:

http://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/memory-as-history-legacy-of-alexander-in-asia-IDK100/

[magicmountain]

The many faces of Alexander

“In periods of crisis communities tend to look to the past for reassurance. Especially in times of momentous and catastrophic change, people reassess their identities and often reinterpret their history in order to redefine themselves. They seek stability in the memory of the past though the manner in which the past is remembered is not absolute. Nowhere is the fluidity of historical memory more clear than in the examination of the interpretations of the life and actions of Alexander the Great.” – James Mayer

In his paper “Mythological history, identity formation and the many faces of Alexander the Great” James Mayer explains how the Jews, Byzantines and Persians used the figure of Alexander in different ways to fulfil their own special historical needs.

Read on:

http://research.monm.edu/mjur/files/2011/04/Alexander_the_Great_2011.pdf

[magicmountain]

The Republic of Macedonia has started building another king-sized statue in the heart of the capital, Skopje. Once completed, the 13-meter (42-foot) bronze effigy of Philip II of Macedon (officially named “The Warrior”) will face an equestrian colossus of his son, Alexander the Great (officially named “Warrior on a Horse”), a couple of hundred meters away - see photo below. Philip stands on a 16-meter (52-foot) plinth.

[magicmountain]

Final touches to "Warrior on a Horse" aka Alexander the Great.

[magicmountain]

Another view of "Warrior" aka Philip of Macedon

More here:

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/giant-statue-of-philip-erected-in-skopje

[magicmountain]

This coin is believed to commemorate Alexander the Great’s defeat of the Indian King Poros at the battle of the Hydaspes in 326 B.C.

A collection of rare ancient Greek coins which has been hidden away for two decades was expected to sell for millions of dollars when it went  up for auction in New York. The Prospero Collection features coins of historical and artistic importance, including one described by an expert as “a masterpiece of ancient Greek art.”

Assembled by a private collector over three decades, from 1960 to 1991, the treasure trove has remained untouched for the past 20 years. After so long out of the spotlight, the coins have attracted serious interest from potential buyers around the world and at recent viewings in the U.S. and the UK.

Paul Hill, ancient Greek coin specialist at dealers A. H. Baldwin Sons, the company behind the sale, said many of the coins were “miniature works of art.” The most valuable item in the collection is a gold stater featuring the head of a bearded satyr and the figure of a winged griffin, which the auction catalog describes as “without doubt the greatest ancient Greek gold coin.”

Hill said the lot, “a masterpiece of ancient Greek art,” had a pre-sale estimate of $650,000 and may eventually go under the hammer for as much as $1 million. While most of the lots were likely to sell to collectors, coins were increasingly being seen as an attractive investment, given the global financial crisis.

“They are of great artistic beauty and historical significance, which makes them more interesting than stocks or shares, and they are tangible and portable, compared to a big estate. Such passion has gone into the collection, and it has been an important part of somebody’s life for so long, that there is an element of sadness to see it split up. But it is lovely to see it published together now, for posterity, before it is ‘recycled’ and finds new homes with new collectors all over the world.”

http://www.athenswire.com/rare-greek-coin-collection-should-make-mint/

[magicmountain]

The Yagnobi - remnant of Alexander's most
challenging adversary

The Yagnob Valley is a hidden jewel among Tajikistan's alpine landscapes. It begins close to the village Anzob and extends from there about 90km to the east until it ends at a barrage of rugged peaks including 5085m Qullai Samarkand. Despite of being one of the least populated areas of Tajikistan, the region is an extraordinarily attractive destination both in cultural and natural terms. It is in this remote place that Sogdian language and culture survived to this day. To the amazement of linguists and ethnographers, the few remaining Yagnobi still speak the language used 2300 years ago by the Persian kings fighting their epic struggle against Alexander the Great.

An independent and warlike Sogdiana formed a border region insulating the ancient Persians from the nomadic Scythians to the north and east. The Sogdian Rock or Rock of Ariamazes, a fortress in Sogdiana, was captured in 327 BC by the forces of Alexander the Great; after an extended campaign putting down Sogdian resistance and founding military outposts manned by his Macedonian veterans, Alexander united Sogdiana with Bactria into one satrapy. The military power of the Sogdians never recovered. Subsequently Sogdiana formed part of the Hellenistic Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. Finally the area was occupied by nomads when the Scythians and Yuezhis overran it around 150 BC.

Subsequent to their domination by Alexander, the Sogdians from the city of Marakanda (Samarkand) became dominant as traveling merchants, occupying a key position along the ancient Silk Road. Sogdians played a major role in facilitating trade between China and Central Asia along the Silk Roads as late as the 10th century AD; their language became a lingua franca of trade. The Sogdians were noted for their tolerance of different religious beliefs. Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion among Sogdians and remained so until after the Islamic conquest, when they gradually converted to Islam.

Until less than half a century ago, the Yagnob valley was almost inaccessible as its entrance is guarded by a narrow gorge through which the Yagnob river rushes, leaving no space for any path to speak of. Protected by this natural barrier, it became a hiding place for people fleeing religious or ethnic prosecution. This was particularly the case at the time of the Arabian invasion, when the remaining Sogdians found sanctuary here. Facing the harsh environment of this alpine valley, their successors had to adapt their lifestyle and become simple herdsmen. The former glory of the Sogdian empire was lost forever. But Zoroastrian rites and the ancient Sogdian language survived throughout the centuries.

The Soghdian language gradually gave way to Persian after the 5th century AD, with the latter largely supplanting the former by the 10th century AD. It is nothing short of a miracle that the Sogdian language and people have survived to the present in the small numbers of the Yaghnobi people and their language.

Nowhere else on Alexander the Great's 22,000-mile, 13-year march from Greece to the Punjab did he encounter more difficulties than in what was known in ancient times as Sogdiana.

Read more here:

http://www.archaeology.org/0411/abstracts/alexander.html

http://yaghnobi.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/history-of-the-yaghnobi-people/


The Sogdians today:

http://www.yagnob.org/JtSH-Yagnob-AJ-Eng.pdf

Explore the Yagnob Valley through these series of stunning photographs:

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/65590

[magicmountain]

The Sogdians in China



Sogdian merchant from Penjikent

The Sogdians were important in the commerce of the Silk Road between the fourth and ninth centuries CE. From their home in the region near today's Samarkand in Central Asia (their core territory straddled what is now southern Uzbekistan and Western Tajikistan), Sogdian merchants traveled across Eurasia.

Among the most important documents of Sogdian history are five nearly complete letters, discovered in 1907 by the famous British archaeologist Aurel Stein in a Chinese watch tower just west of the Jade Gate, a fortified outpost guarding the western approaches to the administrative and cultural center of Dunhuang (at the western end of today's Gansu Province). These ancient letters are the earliest substantial examples of Sogdian writing and thus provide extremely important information about the early history of the Sogdian diaspora along the eastern end of the silk route.

http://www29.homepage.villanova.edu/christopher.haas/sogdian_letters.htm

http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/newsletter/december/new_discoveries.htm

[magicmountain]

Alexander's Sogdian wife



Following his successful siege of the Sogdian Rock Alexander set eyes on Roxanne who was to become his first wife. She was the daughter of a local lord named Oxyartes. Ancient sources describe Alexander's professed love for Roxanne. She accompanied him on his campaign in northern India in 326 BC. After Alexander's sudden death at Babylon in 323 BC, she bore him a posthumous son called Alexander IV Aegus.

[magicmountain]

In the 1870s at the Kreuzschule of Dresden, one of Aurel Stein’s teachers gave him a copy of The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian, the 2nd century Greek historian. As a child Stein had become fascinated by the great Macedonian conqueror and throughout his life devoted many excursions to tracing the routes and stages of Alexander’s Eastern campaign  and verify the exact places in which critical battles had been fought. Stein’s attempts to solve the Alexandrian mysteries used his skills in comparative linguistics, history, historical geography and military history.

http://stein.mtak.hu/en/10-alexanderthegreat.htm

http://venetianred.net/2008/08/30/on-the-trail-of-alexander-aurel-stein-the-caves-of-dunhuang/

http://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/1_Rienjang_pp.pdf

[magicmountain]

Alexander’s Greatest Battle

The Governor of Erbil Mr. Nawzad Hadi Mawlood has invited a team of the University of Athens to conduct a research to locate the Gaugamela battlefield. As a result of this invitation, Dr. Athanasios Sideris, Director of the Department for Archaeology of the Foundation of the Greek World, and Mr. Kleanthis Zouboulakis, Postgraduate Student of the University of Athens, conducted a preliminary topographical survey in April 2011. The battle of Gaugamela (also known as Battle of Arbela) was fought in 331 B.C. between the armies of Alexander the Great and Darius III. Its exact location is still disputed.

Read more about the project here:

http://arbela.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7&Itemid=23&lang=ku
http://www.indiegogo.com/p/115719

Meanwhile Michael Wood mounted his own expedition to seek out this iconic yet elusive battlefield following in the footsteps of Sir Aurel Stein:

1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln7bVQH_EUk
2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8_PHLElhtM&feature=relmfu
3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSROiJqCTrE&feature=relmfu
4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atKcv59yapw&feature=relmfu

[magicmountain]

“Alexander did far more than merely spend more money
than any other person has ever done before and since. He redefined the currency.”

Silver tetradrachma minted in Babylon c. 320BC.The Alexandrine tetradrachma was for centuries
the standard against which everything was measured.

Alexander had probably the best head start in history: The best education money and politics could buy, a well-trained army and – he inherited a gold mine. In 357 his father Phillip conquered the Athenian colony of Amphipolis and Crenides in Thrace giving him a possession of the gold mines of Mount Pangaion. Amphipolis had rich silver mines while Crenides, which Phillip renamed Philippi, had wealthy gold mines on Mount Pangaion.

The mines were the foundation of his power financing his subsequent wars. Philippi alone is said to have provided him with 1000 talents (26,000 kg) per year. Control of these mines enabled Philip to produce a vast series of gold coins which became one of the staple currencies of the Greek world which structured Aegean commerce. Alexander’s campaign started with the gold reserves that his father had built up from the mining operations at Mt Pangaion. It is important to understand that money was a solid foundation for everything Alexander did – and never far from his attention. It has been a mystery to military historians how he could keep such a large army in the field for so many years – and keep it supplied. The answer is indeed very simple: He paid.

He was indeed helped by the confiscation of the Persian war chest, which fell into his hands around the time of the Battle of Issus (333 BC). This treasure had been hoarded by the Persian rulers to the extent that in the Persian Empire there was hardly any cash. This must have meant that the Persian economy must have been reduced to a mere barter economy, which – although better than nothing – is primitive and very inefficient.

The mere appearance of liquidity must have been a major boost to the economy wherever the Greek sandals hit the dirt. Nothing encourages suppliers more than prepaid good prices. These prices would have been inflated; but again considering the previous lack of cash, gold would have been severely overvalued in relation to commodities. Alexander did far more than merely spend more money than any other person has ever done before and since. He redefined the currency.

First he bought all the silver the greedy could lay their hands on by the simple expedient of raising the price of silver in relation to gold. That brought out the private hoards – such as they were. By the very central hoarding of gold in central hands the value of gold in relation to everything else was a matter of conjecture. Nobody could value gold properly in relation to silver, as there was no gold to be had: gold had become as illiquid as the fortunes of king Midas. Alexander had all the gold in the world but he couldn’t eat it.

If taxes are to be paid in gold, then you have to pay an awful lot of silver to make up for the gold shortage - one of the dangers of a bimetallic standard. Having bought all the bad money (silver) Alexander proceeded to re-coin the silver. The re-coining of silver brought some sense of order to the incredible mess of ancient coinage: Every single city state had their own coins:

1)      In bronze, silver (and some cases gold).
2)      In different denominations – different weights, shapes and sizes.
3)      Different relative valuation of the different precious metals.

The Alexandrine tetradrachma was for centuries more or less the standard against which everything was measured. To this day the coin is – if not common – then not particularly rare. Of course most of it has been melted down in the passage of time.

Indubitably the mere existence of an immediately recognizable currency of a set standard had an impact on trade. The avoidance of haggling over the relative value of different unknown coins and their relative merit would have cut out significant amounts of “banking” by shysters in the market place – al needing their cut. The point isn’t trivial, but the founding reason for banking.
 
Fast forward to 2012

In the economic wasteland that crisis-hit Greece has become for investors, the promise of gold from mines that once bankrolled Alexander the Great seems like an oasis in a desert. But the dream is by no means unanimous, even if it guarantees jobs in small towns like Aristoteles in northern Greece —named after the ancient philosopher who was born in the area —as the country grapples with a monstrous recession. Greece’s desperate need for foreign capital, coupled with the sharp rise in the price of gold in recent years, has led to a renaissance of efforts to mine the precious metal.

New projects are in the works in three places: near Perama in Thrace in north-east Greece, near Kilkis in the north and in the Halkidiki peninsula, both in the northern Greek province of Macedonia.It is in Halkidiki that the process is most advanced, with the environment ministry in July 2011 awarding a licence to mine two seams of gold near Olympias to Hellas Gold, a subsidiary of Canada’s European Goldfields.

The firm, acquired earlier this year by compatriot Eldorado Gold, says it plans to plough around one billion euros ($1.2 billion) into the mines of Halkidiki, which have been producing lead, zinc and silver for decades.“We have already invested around 150 million euros and we employ 650 people. Eventually we intend to create 1,500 jobs,” Petros Stratoudakis from the firm told AFP.But not everyone is pleased.

“How many jobs are going to be destroyed in agriculture and tourism because of the environmental effects?” wonders local Georgios Tsirigotis, 54, a university professor who campaigned against earlier mining projects.

http://www.valuewalk.com/2012/01/alexander-the-great-the-rmb-and-the-euro/
http://postnoon.com/2012/06/14/golden-dream-divides-crisis-hit-greeks/53614

[magicmountain]

This is a story told in first person by Tabnit Gisgo, now an old man remembering his heyday as a spy for generals and governors. The novel begins in 323BC Babylon, where he is lured into service on the pretext of informing on a corrupt Persian satrap. Unbeknownst to him, Tabnit is secretly being used by a clique of powerful Macedonian generals who hope to reign in the ambitions of Alexander the Great. They command Tabnit to poison Perdiccas, a high-ranking general. But Tabnit’s venom mistakenly ends up on the lips of Alexander the Great, killing one of the world’s greatest rulers. From that moment on, Tabnit will spend much of his life on the run.

While hiding out in a Babylonian temple, he encounters Ptolemy, the famous Greco-Roman astronomer and poet, who puts Tabnit under his patronage. Ptolemy dispatches him to Egypt where he is ordered to bribe and steal his way through into a position to snatch the body of Alexander. His actions will launch a war between Ptolemy and Perdiccas, one of Alexander’s most well-known generals. Their warring will lead to a climactic battle that takes place on the River Nile with the future of the ancient world at stake.

From the great conqueror Alexander to the historical personages of Ptolemy and Perdiccas, the novel is an action-filled education on the glory and gore of one of the world’s first civilizations. As Tabnit himself will say of his tainted expeditions as a spy, “Truth, falsehood and the propensity of my fellow man to confuse one with the other, are commodities I’ve made a great deal of gold out of over the years.”

“The premise of rewriting history (particularly classical history) may be well represented, but the author’s real achievement is the creation of Tabnit Gisgo – a crude, bumbling yet completely appealing antihero. A memorable narrator and a rollicking plot make Eyre’s new series one to watch.” – Kirkus Reviews.

“M.D Eyre has created an antihero to rank with the best of them: cowardly, crass, bumbling, and thoroughly unpleasant, along, of course, with being immensely entertaining. This is a rip-roaring great tale that also has a subtle message about how a hero can mess everything up for everyone, and that goes double for ‘the great'." – Historical Novel Society.

[fritzkep]

MM, have you heard about the language Burushaski in Pakistan, recently indicated to be Indo-European? There might be an Alexandrine connection, even if indirect.

http://hotword.dictionary.com/burushaski/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burushaski

[magicmountain]

MM, have you heard about the language Burushaski in Pakistan, recently indicated to be Indo-European? There might be an Alexandrine connection, even if indirect.

http://hotword.dictionary.com/burushaski/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burushaski

Indeed I have Fritz and had a piece lined up for Travels with ATG. Apparently a linguistics researcher at the Macquarie University in Australia has discovered that  Burushaski, which is spoken by about 90,000 people who reside in a remote area of Pakistan, is Indo-European in origin. According to a recent report, Prof Ilija Casule’s "painstaking research, based on a comprehensive grammatical, phonological, lexical and semantic analysis, which established that the Burushaski language is in fact an Indo-European language most likely descended from one of the ancient Balkan languages".

Prof Casule said that the language is most probably ancient Phrygian. The Phrygians migrated from Macedonia to Anatolia (today part of Turkey) and were famous for their legendary kings who figure prominently in Greek mythology such as King Midas who turned whatever he touched into gold. They later migrated further east, reaching India. Indeed, according to ancient legends of the Burushaski (or Burusho) people, they are descendants of Alexander the Great.

Read more here:

http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/linguistics/article00403.html