by F S Naiden
Alexander did not call a general meeting about Arabia, and so the companions made their objections one by one or in small groups. Commanders disliked serving with Iranians, and engineers busy with Alexander’s canal disliked the prospect of leaving the Euphrates valley for the desert. Everyone disliked the proposed time of departure, summer, when the temperature often reached 120 degrees Fahrenheit. They also wondered about the proposed starting point, on the lower Euphrates. What lay beyond? They did not know the extent of the vast wasteland later known as the Arabian Empty Quarter, but they knew that all the caravan routes lay well to the north. Reaching these routes would take weeks of marching in desert winds that dried up the water in the water skins. Withered herbs were the only food. Camels could live on them, but men and horses could not.
How would Alexander manage the empire meanwhile? If the Greek cities, ever restive, heard that Alexander had vanished in the desert with his army, they might seize the chance to rebel.
Assuming the Babylonians were consulted, they added another caution. The last king before Cyrus, Nabonidus, had gone to Arabia and tried to govern Mesopotamia from there. Marduk and the gods of Babylon took offense. They saw to it that Cyrus took away Nabonidus’s throne. The gods might well do the same to Alexander.
Alexander remained obdurate. He said Craterus would be on the scene to suppress any Greek uprising. Besides, the invasion would pay. Babylonian traders said that the Arabs were so rich they wore bracelets and necklaces made of gold and precious stones. According to Babylonian records, the Arabs gave one Assyrian king 30,000 camels as tribute, along with 5,000 bags of spices. Arabia would be India on the cheap.36
Above all, Alexander said, the Macedonians must make this expedition to defend their reputation. As he reminded them, the visiting sheiks had refused to submit, even when he insisted.
To resist Alexander, the companions needed help from Antipater, who was postponing his arrival in Babylon. The regent sent his son, Cassander, in his stead. Cassander’s younger brother, Iollas, introduced him at court. Iollas was the king’s cupbearer as well as the lover of Alexander’s new favorite, the ship captain Medius. In the peculiar circumstances of that winter, Medius, Iollas, and Cassander replaced Alexander’s older and better-known counselors.
Encouraged by his new clique, Alexander fell into a routine of nightly drinking, late mornings, and dice. He had not lived this way before. When campaigning, he breakfasted at dawn, dined in the late afternoon, and drank moderately. He did not play dice except when he was sick or recuperating from wounds, and then he played for trifling stakes. His private life testified to the insignificance of sex. Drunkenness and sex, he said, reminded him of his own mortality, and he needed no reminders besides his wounds. He was not chaste, any more than he was abstemious, but he did not indulge himself, and he had no romance in his makeup. His three marriages were all arranged, and he arranged them himself. When he had a mistress, Campaspe, pose for a painter, and the painter became infatuated with her, he gave her to the painter as a present. In exchange, he got the picture.37 He had all the appetites of the men in the Macedonian elite, such as his father, and he indulged these appetites, but he had never let appetites get the better of his ambition. He had been more self-controlled than Philip and than many of his generals. He always had to ask himself whether he was a match for Cyrus, the way Caesar later asked whether he was a match for Alexander.
Now he drank with impunity. He had driven away or killed the older companions who could and would have stopped him. Instead he surrounded himself with men too young and too weak to stop him—the clique of Medius, but also young bodyguards such as Ptolemy and commanders such as Nearchus.38
Worse, Alexander had forsaken the cult that helped the king and his companions share risks and rewards. He had not led his companions in an act of public thanksgiving since he celebrated the marriages at Susa a year before. He had not given them much largesse since India. So much for shared rewards. Since coming to Babylon, they no longer shared any risks.
While neglecting his duties as a priest, Alexander explored other religious roles. Some of these roles, such as temple-building, sustained his empire, but other roles did not. In Babylon he consulted his horoscope, a new pastime, and dressed like Amon-Re at dinner, with horns on his head. Court gossips whispered that Alexander was impersonating any god he liked, even Artemis. He carried a bow and arrows on his shoulders, like her, and when he played Heracles he added Persian accouterments.39
The companions remembered that one of Philip’s doctors had dressed like this at some dinner parties. Philip had laughed at him and then ignored him. Now the king was dressing this way. Yet men like Medius made no objection, and they approved when Alexander said he would recognize his father Philip by building him a pyramid at Giza—the biggest pyramid of all.40
The Babylonian priests might have helped Alexander concentrate on his duties. So far, they had helped him in some ways and burdened him in others. Now relations between the king and the priests would deteriorate.
by spring 323, Alexander had spent several months in Babylon. The equinox approached, and with it the New Year’s festival that would reinvigorate the king’s authority. The Babylonians maintained the fiction that the king came to the throne at this time, so the festival marked an anniversary. The priests could not force Alexander to attend, only warn him of the consequences of neglecting his duty. The foolish king who preceded Cyrus, Nabonidus, skipped the festival during the nine years he lived in Arabia. That especially explained why he lost the throne to Cyrus. Nabonidus would not have Marduk, so Marduk would not have Nabonidus. Always cooperative with the priests, Alexander agreed to participate.41
The festival was very ancient, and it would go on for several centuries more. Descendants of Alexander’s generals celebrated it as late as 204 BC.42
Esangil, the main site of the ceremonies, was usually off-limits, even for the king. Now the shrine would welcome the king and a select few of his subjects. The main gate, usually closed at night and guarded by day, would be open throughout, and Alexander, after a few days of coaching, would arrive from the palace, many blocks away, and enter the shrine and even the temple. A master of ceremonies, the sheshgallu, would perform the rites that preceded the king’s arrival, and then guide Alexander through a second coronation, a grand tour of several shrines in and around Babylon, and a sacred marriage. By the end of the festival, Alexander would have a new wife as well as a new lease on the throne of thrones.
On the first day, April 5, the main gate to Esangil opened and “insiders” with the right to enter the shrine, appeared in force to make preparations. Waiting in the palace, Alexander learned his lines from one of the priests. On the next day, the sheshgallu rose two hours before dawn and prayed to Marduk on Alexander’s behalf. “Display your womb,” he asked this male god, a Babylonian phrase meaning “show pity.” Then the sheshgallu asked, “Establish the exemptions for the sons of Babylon, the protected people.” Alexander had learned of these exemptions during his negotiations with Mazdai.
For the rest of the day functionaries came and went while the king remained in the palace. He kept rehearsing for two more days, as temple craftsmen fashioned figurines to place before the patron god of judges, and the sheshgallu prayed to Marduk and to Marduk’s consort, Zarpanit, asking them to protect the temple of Esangil. At night, from the courtyard of the shrine, the sheshgallu gave thanks to the constellation of stars the Greeks later called Pegasus. The Babylonians said that Marduk modeled Esangil on this constellation.43
On the fourth day, Alexander’s work began. The priests escorted him from his palace to Esangil and ushered him into a chapel for the scribal god Nabû, Marduk’s son, where they gave him a scepter. This sign of command in his hand, Alexander sailed ten miles downriver to another temple of Nabû. There Alexander and the priests picked up a statue of Nabû, put it aboard the royal barge, and sailed back to Babylon. This excursion reminded Alexander of his duties in Egypt, but Nabû was not what Eg
ypt would lead one to expect. This god was not imposing or heroic, like Horus; he was a clerk. Still being coached, Alexander took Nabû by one hand. The god held a cuneiform tablet in the other.
Meanwhile, the sheshgallu remained in Babylon, reciting the Babylonian creation epic to a statue of Marduk. This long poem resembled the Greek creation epic, Hesiod’s Theogony. In the Babylonian poem, Marduk rose to power over other gods, as Zeus did in Hesiod. Zeus, though, did little with his power. Marduk did much more, planning canals and dams and creating an inferior breed, mankind, to do the work. Marduk meant most humans to be slaves, but exempted the Babylonians. Marduk had not exempted foreigners, but Alexander was no longer a Macedonian. He had become the pupil of Nabû.44
The festival reached its peak at Esangil on the fifth day: the sheshgallu rose at two, the gods ate by eight, an exorcist purified the sanctum of Marduk, banging an enormous drum while aides held up torches and sacrificed a sheep, and a second exorcist did the same in chapel of Nabû. The peripatetic sheshgallu inspected the gold-spangled blue cloth, called “the Heavens,” which hung from the walls of the chapel. Attendants brought Alexander into the courtyard of Esangil, and the “insiders,” depilated and dressed in white, led him into the temple.
The sheshgallu stepped forward out of the darkness, took away Alexander’s scepter, ring, and staff, and deposited them in another room. He returned and slapped Alexander on the face. Then he took him by the ears and led him into the sanctum, where Marduk awaited him. The sheshgallu pushed Alexander to his knees and held down his head while the king said his long-prepared lines:
I did not sin, lord of all lands.
I did not neglect your godhead.
I did not ravage Babylon.
I did not order its downfall.
I did not strike the cheeks of the clergy.
I honored Babylon.
I did not smash its walls.
The sheshgallu raised the suppliant and called for the regalia, which he returned to Alexander. Then the sheshgallu slapped him again. If Alexander shed a tear, he would receive Marduk’s blessing. If he did not, the priest ought to slap him a third time, and a fourth, until he cried. He must.45
After so many battle wounds, Alexander is unlikely to have cried. As the son of Philip, he would be ashamed to weep, and as the son of Amon, he would not know why he should. He wept when he forgave his men, but now they were on the road to Macedon. He wept when Hephaestion died, but Hephaestion was now a ghost, waiting in limbo for the burial in Egypt Alexander promised to give him.
At dusk that day, the sheshgallu and the king prayed together and sacrificed a white bull in the courtyard of Esangil. On the sixth day, priests decapitated the figurines placed before the patron god of judges, slaying the past. On the seventh day, all the gods gathered in Nabû’s home, and the priests announced the astral destiny of Babylon for the coming year. The next morning, a procession took the gods out of Esangil. Marduk, Nabû, and many other gods paraded around the city on carts. The shatammu and other dignitaries walked behind them, as did colleges of exorcists. Everyone watched for ominous movements by the statues. Then Alexander and the sheshgallu ushered the gods aboard a barge to visit a rural shrine reserved for New Year celebrations.46
There Alexander got married, Babylonian style. His wife was Marduk’s consort Zarpanit. In earlier times, Babylonian kings impersonated Marduk and made love to a priestess who impersonated Zarpanit. In the Babylon of Alexander’s time, statues impersonated the divine couple while the king and the priestess drank beer and ate mutton. In Egypt Alexander spoke to gods, and on campaign omens spoke to Alexander, but in Babylonia symbols spoke to each other and Alexander did not know what they said. Officially rejuvenated, Alexander returned to the city.47
After his experiences in Egypt and Phoenicia, Alexander could not have found the New Year festival reassuring. It gave him too little to do, and it gave the priests too much. All Near Eastern societies had priests, but not even Egypt had priests who made such ceremonial and scientific claims. Of all Babylon’s rulers, Alexander and his Macedonians were least prepared to understand these claims. They came from a society where priests did not go to school and where gods appeared on stage to be apostrophized and upbraided.
In the weeks after the ceremony, the waters in the rivers rose, making sailing easier, and Alexander escaped from Babylon. Now that the companions had got him back from the priests, they gladly accompanied him. Aristobulus needed to map the waterways to build the Euphrates canal, and the boat captains had to learn their routes. Alexander would supervise, but he also wished to resume his hobby of tomb-hunting.48
Late that spring he made several short trips to the land of the first Mesopotamian kings and cities. Because the Euphrates branched into a skein of waterways, the royal barge sometimes went astray. Changes in the river’s course rendered many places inaccessible. Some tombs were no longer along main waterways. Even if the royal party found a site, they might not recognize it. At some sites, only bricks remained, stamped with words like
Palace of sleep,
Tomb of rest,
Eternal residence
Of Sennacherib, king of Ashur’s country.
Looking around, Alexander and his fellow tourists might see no sign of the royal residence, or of the king supposed to be resting there. Wild pigs abounded, so the hunting was good, but there were poor prospects for finding any of the tombs on Alexander’s list (if the priests gave him one). Mesopotamia was nothing like Egypt.49
The companions seem to have recorded just one incident that took place during these trips. Alexander was piloting the barge when the wind came up and blew away his sun hat and diadem. A sailor jumped into the water and retrieved them, putting the hat and diadem on his head to keep them safe as he swam back to the barge. For this piece of impertinence Alexander whipped him. The companions talked about this incident after they returned to the city. Some regarded the sailor’s innocent mistake as a bad omen for Alexander.50
Babylonian literature listed many ominous events, but the priests could not find any entry about a sailor’s picking a Persian diadem out of a canal and putting it on Alexander’s head. In any case, the priests would have discounted the incident because it did not correspond to a celestial sign. (A drowned cow, for example, was an omen only if the moon was dark.) Marduk wrote celestial signs across the face of the heavens by causing stars and planets to move, and Babylon’s learned men read the god’s writing. No layman—certainly no Macedonian—could read it. The companions were fretting over events beyond their understanding.
Alexander had been in Babylon for some months when the priests announced that the king was in great danger. The companions were never able to learn why. Perhaps the astronomers feared the eclipse due to occur in May. It might cause the king to die within a year. Perhaps they objected to Alexander’s tearing down part of the city wall to build Hephaestion’s memorial. That would anger Marduk. They could not want more money for repairing Esangil. Alexander had reduced the cost of the repairs by putting his own men to work on the project.51
Whatever the reason, the priests told Alexander he must undergo a substitution ritual to protect himself. They would enthrone a mock king and give him enough privileges to lure misfortune away from Alexander. Then, after the signs in the heavens or elsewhere became favorable, the danger would pass. The priests would dispose of the mock king. Alexander would be safe and could resume the throne. The Babylonians and their neighbors had employed this rite for many centuries. Priests in Assyria had performed it for Esarhaddon, conqueror of Egypt, four times.52
Alexander should leave everything to the Babylonians. They would pick a proper substitute, such as a simpleton or a prisoner. The substitute would have to volunteer—the rite depended on that—and sign a contract agreeing to attract evil omens. Then the priests would mix into his food a text describing the omens, and he would eat it. They would train him to act as king and see to it that he dined and drank well. He
would have a queen to share his bed and his fate. In due course, the priests would kill the pair of them in some place of decent obscurity.
Throughout the rite, Alexander must avoid the mock king and the priests in charge of him. Interfering was out of the question. Alexander could continue to run the army and the empire, but in private. He should avoid the palace and travel incognito.53
Alexander agreed. He had sometimes used his half-brother as a substitute for performing sacrifices, so being replaced by a simpleton did not trouble him. He did not grasp that the priests must control the rite. As a chief priest in Macedon and even Egypt, he expected to remain in charge himself. As for the companions, they could not conceive that anyone but a prince or a regent could replace the king. If anyone else tried, that man would count as a traitor. The Babylonians may have explained the rite to them, but they did not understand it well enough to prevent a mishap that occurred soon after the priests had enlisted their human scapegoat and put him to work.54
On that day the companions were in the throne room. Alexander was out of the way, getting a massage or visiting an exercise room. Then a man the companions took for an escaped slave or prisoner entered, put on the king’s mantle and diadem, and sat on the throne. Babylonian eunuchs accompanied him, and when he sat down they beat their breasts and lamented. The companions asked the man on the throne what he was doing, but he gave no satisfactory answer. The companions sent word to Alexander. Ignoring the priests’ instructions, he came to the throne room. Various seers happened to be in the room and warned the king that the incident was ominous. Alexander listened to them and ignored the Babylonians attending the mock king. After the seers called for the imposter to be killed, Alexander ordered that he be executed.55
Alexander either did not realize who the mock king was, a remarkable oversight, or let the seers prevail against his better judgment. That would be even more remarkable, for he had always dealt with seers confidently, even arrogantly. Most remarkably, he did not listen to the Babylonians, who made some attempt, however poorly translated, to point out his error. His religious aptitude deserted him.