Soldier, Priest, and God

by F S Naiden

  The first stages of the journey kept them to the north of the rocks and wastelands of the Qattara basin. The oases were few, but they were adequate for a caravan of hundreds. The last big stage, four days mostly beyond the basin, was arduous. An unexpected, refreshing rain fell, but the water at the next oasis, Gara, was brackish. The nine springs up and down the valley were all bitter. In one more day, they reached the outskirts of Siwah, where salt marshes framed the road. They stepped down into a gorge where hostile Berbers could have slaughtered them. Then the twenty-mile-long strip of the oasis opened before them. Two miles before they reached the shrine a pair of hills rose like stone pillars, the last remains of a plateau that the desert winds had blown away. Mile after mile of date-bearing palms stretched into the distance.41

  Alexander came at the time of the date harvest, or just after, and many caravans of camels were heading back from the oasis with baskets of fruit. They left not by Alexander’s route but by another, going east toward Bahariya. Pilgrims on this easterly route had the pick of the fruit—the best about four inches long and sugar-sweet, the worst bright yellow and fit only for camels.

  The temple of Amon stood half a mile south of the settlement. Compared to the temple at Karnak, it was minuscule, a mere chapel attached to a sandstone redoubt built for local princes. Before this small compound stretched a grove of palms. The satellite shrine built by Nakhtnebef stood on the far side of the trees. Alexander passed into the temple alone. An image of Amon appeared on one side of the entryway and an image of a local dynast on the other. The god was ram-headed, a feature never seen in the Nile valley. A legend read, “Amon-Re, the lord of oracles, proclaims life, health and happiness for the chief of the two deserts, Soutekhirdisou, son of the chief of the two deserts, Leloutek.”42 Alexander was not a descendant of Leloutek, yet here he was, hoping for his own proclamation from Amon, as though he were one more sheik.

  Alexander now communed with Amon. As the king stood in a small room, a priest impersonating the god spoke to him from behind a wall pierced by a series of small holes. The companions had no way of knowing what was said. The king returned outside, accompanied by more priests, who served as translators, and addressed his men.43

  He was, Alexander said, the son of Amon. Amon had said so.

  He also told the companions that he asked the oracle a question about Philip, whom they knew to be his true father. Were those responsible for Philip’s murder all dead? Amon had said yes, and the companions accepted this answer, even though Alexander had told them Darius was one of those responsible.

  Alexander did not tell the companions everything that passed between him and the god. That, he knew, would be impious. In a way, Amon had initiated him, and as an initiate, Alexander must keep secret what transpired.

  At the customary time, the sacred boat carrying the sun disk proceeded from the main temple. Pilgrims approached and conveyed their questions to the priests. At least one companion from Alexander’s entourage joined them and asked a question that Alexander or his advisors had planted: Should the army give Alexander the offerings due to a god?

  With one exception, no Macedonian king had ever received sacrifices as though he were a god. That was Philip, and the occasion was an attempt to mollify him by a city about to be attacked. The companion asking the question knew this history, but the Egyptian priests answering the question did not. They knew that Alexander, like any pharaoh, should be regarded as an incarnation of Horus. For that reason, they answered yes.44

  The expedition could not stay long in Siwah without depleting the resources of the oasis, and so the royal party departed for the Nile Valley. Rather than go back the way they came, they headed east on the pilgrims’ way to Bahariya. En route, they got their share of the dates. Unlike the wastelands to the north, the terrain was picturesque: first a black desert formed by small black volcanic stones atop the sand, then, around the oasis, a white desert of chalk and limestone outcroppings sculpted by the wind. They clambered up and down deep gulches until they reached a plain sloping down to the oasis.

  Here, in a tiny settlement, the pharaoh did his customary work of turning the first spade for the building of a new shrine. So small a place did not take long to build. It comprised a temple with a forecourt of pale yellow sandstone and attached mud-brick buildings, and a surrounding wall with a single stone door. A temple wall showed Pharaoh Alexander making an offering, contained in round vases, to Horus and Isis. On another wall the recipient of the royal offering was Amon-Re. At the rear of the temple a painting showed Alexander offering the grounds for the temple to Amon-Re and Mout, the mother goddess of Thebes.45

  Alexander and a local notable, Horhetep, commissioned inscriptions on a piece of sandstone at the entrance to the shrine. On one side Horhetep would make a dedication in hieroglyphics as “first prophet of Amon-Re.” Alexander would use two sides. A hieroglyphic inscription on one side would list Alexander’s five pharaonic titles and call him “beloved of Amon, the lord who gives oracles.” The adjacent five-word Greek text would say only “King Alexander for Amon his father.” Alexander could have used a good Greek stonemason, but he had not brought one. Instead he had to use a local Egyptian, who misspelled his name and botched the word “his.” Readers would not be able to tell whether Amon was Alexander’s father or not. The errors showed that Alexander left before the letters were cut, for he surely would have corrected the flaws.46

  The royal party marched east two and a half days to the Nile Valley, and then Alexander boarded a royal barge and sailed downriver to inspect troops. Sometime during the trip, an accident occurred. The royal barge was so crowded that one companion, a young son of Parmenio named Hector, could not find a spot. He boarded another overcrowded boat, it sank, and he died of exhaustion after swimming to shore. Alexander gave him a funeral surpassing anything done for the dead at Issus, Tyre, or Gaza. A son of Parmenio was a virtual prince.47

  Soon Alexander was again in Memphis, where he sacrificed to “Zeus the King,” in other words, the Zeus of the Macedonians. At this time, if not before, his importunate mother sent him a slave skilled in Macedonian sacrifice. He also told the army about the oracle at Siwah, and about the new idea that he should be worshipped as a god.48

  Alexander’s indirect role in the young man’s death more or less influenced the army’s response to the oracle. Hector’s brother Philotas ridiculed the idea that Alexander was the son of Amon. Parmenio told his son to be discreet, but Philotas told any who cared to hear that Philip was Alexander’s father, and that Olympias knew it. Perhaps the Arabs would worship Alexander. They had only two gods and might want a third.49

  Alexander could not have readily explained to Philotas, or any of his men, that he now had a heavenly father as well as an earthly one. Macedonians and Greeks put human beings on one plane and gods on another. Heracles, an exception, proved the rule. They allowed for a kind of intermediary, a hero, but a Greek or Macedonian hero (or heroine) was a peculiar being, honored much like a god, but only after his or her death. Alexander was no hero to his men. He was alive, and they wanted to keep him that way. After his death, the companions expected Callisthenes to have him. The official historian had promised to immortalize Alexander, an orthodox literary aim different from divinizing him.

  For the time being, Philotas went unrebuked. He did not go unwatched. Antigone, his concubine, had found someone to confide in—Craterus, a senior regimental commander. When Antigone began telling Craterus about Philotas’s religious opinions, and Craterus began passing the news to Alexander, the king did not discourage him. Alexander respected Craterus, an imposing man with social standing to match, for he was the oldest son of a leading companion from the mountain district of Orestis. At Sidon he stalked lions with Alexander in the Persian paradise, and he took accidental spear wounds without complaining. Alexander liked him for that. The king also realized that Craterus and Philotas were jealous of each other. Each wanted fame and would be glad to have it at the expense of his rival. Philot
as went further, wanting fame for himself and his father at the expense of Alexander. In Philotas’s opinion, the king got more fame than he deserved. Alexander’s claim to be son of Amon would not only divide him from men such as Philotas, who rejected it, but also divide his men from each other.50

  Whatever the companions thought, Alexander continued to serve the Macedonians as a priest. No talk of divinity would spoil the winning formula of what was still Philip’s army.51

  alexander, who liked war better than administration, struggled to find some way to govern his new province. He recognized that Egypt had reoriented him, and he feared it might have the same effect on the administrators he would leave behind once he departed in pursuit of Darius.

  He did not want to appoint a satrap, as the Persians had. A satrap of Egypt would be an acting king with more money and subjects than any other subordinate. A satrap would also have to deal with Egypt’s priests, who would try to avoid being taxed through flattery, bribes, and intrigue. To resist this onslaught, he would need to appear emphatically regal. A Macedonian might not understand the dangers of this position, or, if he did, might fancy himself independent. He would watch the priests impersonating Alexander and resent this charade performed for an absentee ruler. The first Persian appointed satrap of Egypt had proved disloyal.52

  Alexander found nothing to emulate in the rest of the Persian administrative hierarchy, either. The Persians appointed two lieutenant governors for Thebes and the south but ruled the delta directly, without lieutenants. The Persians made this lopsided arrangement because they distrusted the priests of Amon-Re at Thebes, and hoped to intimidate them, and because brigands and rebels might ambush lieutenants sent into the delta. Brigands infested this region, and a great rebellion had begun there seventy years before.53

  To replace the Persian machinery, Alexander divided Egypt into two parts of equal size, one centered on Thebes, and one including both Memphis and the delta. He gave Upper Egypt to a Persian with long experience in Egypt, and the delta to an Egyptian. Whereas the Persians put Egypt, Libya, and Sinai under one satrap, he separated them and gave Libya and Sinai to Greek administrators. No other place in the empire was as complicated, costly, or lucrative as Egypt.54

  This new arrangement suited the Egyptians, and at the same time it confined them to the Nile valley. It did not assure Alexander of the revenue he hoped to extract, and so he appointed a Greek companion, Cleomenes, chief of finance for the entire region. Except for Alexander’s own treasurers, Cleomenes would be the highest-ranking financial official in the empire.55

  Since the Egyptians had no effective army of their own—and since Alexander wished to rule Egypt firmly—he stationed more troops there than the Persians had. Along with garrisons at Pelusium and Memphis, he established two small armies, one for Upper Egypt and one for Memphis and the delta. He chose Peucestas, the best linguist among the companions, for Upper Egypt. Balacrus, who had commanded allied infantry at Issus, got Lower Egypt, where he would suppress brigands or rebels.56

  In all, Alexander put eight men in charge of Egypt and environs—an Egyptian, a Persian, two Greeks, and four Macedonians. Three were governors, four generals, and one, Cleomenes, was a financier and also governor of Sinai. Even that was not the whole story, for Alexander reserved to himself one important duty, that of appointing new priests. Priests must be Egyptians, of course, and probably would come from leading priestly families, and he alone knew this elite. One such family was that of the last native pharaoh, Nakhtnebef, whose son held a high place in Egyptian society during Alexander’s reign and just afterward.

  Besides reorganizing Egypt, Alexander established a new capital. During the last two periods of native rule the capital had been in the delta, and before that the capital had been Thebes. Alexander’s dynasty would be Greco-Macedonian, and so he decided to build a capital in the place on the coast closest to Greece. Here he could establish a cult for himself as founder of the city. Priests there would depend on royal patronage, and most revenues would flow to him. As with his colony near Troy, he named the city Alexandria. Alexander conducted the inaugural ceremony in April, shortly before he left Egypt.57

  The Egyptians for a long time called the city Raqote, which means “under construction.” The chief builder, the financier Cleomenes, set to work even before Alexander and the army left. Since the city did not have any fresh water, Cleomenes and the engineer Diades devised an expensive solution for this water shortage. Conduits would flow from the Nile to each house and building. At the end of the conduit, the water would settle and become clear enough to drink. Greeks benefited from these water mains, but poor Egyptians, obliged to live beside the river, would not. Like their countrymen elsewhere in Egypt, they continued to hoist their water from the Nile.58

  Next came public buildings, none completed before Alexander’s death. Even so, Alexandria became an emporium within a few years, and surpassed Memphis as the largest city in Egypt.

  Alexandria developed a mix of religious practices. The cult of Alexander flourished, as did other cults willing to pray for the ruler of Egypt. In exchange for priestly support, the Macedonians protected Egyptian clergy. Peucestas, for example, posted a No Trespassing sign at the entrance to a priest’s chamber.59

  As Alexandria grew, the use of currency also grew. Earlier, coins had been scanty. Athenian “owls” had circulated in Greek emporia and the authorities had struck some imitations of Athenian coins with hieroglyphic legends. Most Egyptians relied on barter, or used silver and copper as monies of account. Only the pharaoh, the priests, and a few others paid in silver or gold bullion. Money was not an important form of wealth. Now Cleomenes started Egypt’s first big mint, and Alexander continued to open mints as the empire expanded. Only a dozen years after Alexander left, an Egyptian hoarding money in the upriver town of Demanhur accumulated more than 8,000 coins minted by Alexander in Phoenicia, Babylon, Macedon, and Egypt, along with others minted by satraps and cities. This trove, discovered by British archaeologists in 1908, remains the largest numismatic find ever made in the Middle East. Alexander taught the Egyptians to think financially.60

  Egypt taught Alexander to think theologically. Once only a priest, he now conceived of himself as a priest and a god, a recipient as well as a performer of rituals. The old idea that Greek gods were foreign gods coexisted with the new idea that Alexander was one of the cross-cultural gods. He had become a religious innovator, and after he left Egypt for other places he might innovate again.

  This new disposition deepened the split between him and his companions. To them, Alexander remained a young leader like Jason of the Argonauts. If Jason could enlist the aid of the sorceress Medea, Alexander could enlist support from the Egyptian priests, but he should not do their bidding, and he should not expect his soldiers to do it. In that spirit, the army left Egypt behind, about six months after arriving, and went in pursuit of Darius. For them, this crucial event in Alexander’s life had been an overlong vacation.

  The companions reported that the king founded Alexandria after receiving an omen any Greek would understand: when he marked the perimeter of the new city by throwing barley grains, birds came and devoured them. The birds showed that many foreigners would come and settle there. Near Eastern stories about Alexandria mention omens, too, but add that the ram-headed god Amon blessed the city.61

  In an Armenian tale, Alexander asked Amon how to become immortal, and Amon spoke to him about Alexandria instead. Amon and Alexander conversed in a dream. The early Christian writer of this tale mistook Parmenio for an architect.

  “I, the ram, say to you that if you wish to remain ageless, build a noteworthy city on the island of Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, on the coast of Egypt, and name it for yourself.”

  Looking at the god, Alexander said, “Give me a sign that you are the god of this land.”

  The god answered, “Alexander, have you forgotten what happened while you stood at prayer, making offerings at a Greek altar? A great eagle swooped down
, seized the entrails of your sacrifice, and flew off into the air. It circled around and dropped them on an Egyptian altar. Was it not plain to you that I am the guardian and protecting god of all?”

  Alexander entreated the god and asked: “Will this city remain true to the name Alexandria, for which it will be built? Or will my name be changed to that of another king?” The god took him by the hand and led him to a high mountain and said: “Alexander, can you move this mountain to another place?” Alexander thought and answered, “How could I, Lord?” The god said to him: “So too, your name can never be changed. Instead, Alexandria shall flourish and overflow with bounty.”

  To this, Alexander replied, “Lord, disclose this to me, too: how am I destined to die?”

  The god said: “It is better and more honorable for a man not to know when his life will end. Life seems boundless and infinitely varied only when men are ignorant of its evils. But if you wish to learn your fate, I shall tell you forthwith: with my help, you, a callow young man, shall subdue all foreign nations; and then, by dying and yet not dying, you shall come to me.

  “The city of Alexandria that you build will be coveted by all the world, and be a home in which gods shall dwell for a long time to come. It will abound in beauty, size, and crowds of men. All who settle there shall stay on and forget their place of birth.

  “Kings shall forever revere you as one who has become a god according to the customs of this land. Many kings shall come to Alexandria, not to make war, but to revere you as one who has been apotheosized. Once you have died, you shall receive gifts from kings forever. For you shall dwell here both when you are dead and when you are still alive. This city you are building is to be your grave.”