Alexander the Great

by Philip Freeman

  Alexander and his army were glad to leave the smoking ruins of Tyre behind as they continued their march down the Mediterranean coast. The causeway they had worked so hard to build soon began to gather silt and sand, so that in time it would be covered and grow to become a stretch of land permanently connecting the former island of Tyre to the shore.

  The coast of Palestine was baking under the summer sun as the Macedonians made their way south. The ancient records do not mention Alexander taking the less direct but more hospitable road inland through Galilee and down the Jordan River valley. The Jewish historian Josephus alone asserts that Alexander journeyed to the temple at Jerusalem to pay his respect to the high priest, but this is almost certainly pious fiction. Instead the Macedonians took the shorter path down the coast past Mount Carmel, then on to Joppa, where Jonah reportedly took ship before being swallowed by a great fish.

  Somewhere along this arid road, envoys from the Great King met Alexander with a new offer of peace. The Persian campaign in the Aegean had all but collapsed with the defection of the Phoenicians, so that the hoped-for uprising in Greece now seemed most unlikely. Even as the Persian ambassadors were arriving in camp, envoys from the Greek cities—except the Spartans, of course—were present, offering congratulations to Alexander on his victories. It was taking Darius much longer than he had anticipated to collect an army from the distant provinces of his empire. He needed at least another year to prepare for war, so it seemed best to buy time by striking a deal with Alexander. The Great King therefore was willing to increase the ransom he would pay for his family, allow Alexander to marry his eldest daughter, and grant him all the lands west of the Euphrates River if he would end his campaign. Darius reminded the young king that the Persian Empire was vast and filled with warlike people. If he was foolish enough to try to conquer it, he would grow old in the attempt, even in the unlikely event that he was to defeat the Persian army in battle. Better to accept the lands of the eastern Mediterranean as a gift than throw away his life on some battlefield in Persia or in the wastelands of Bactria.

  When Alexander read the letter to his council, Parmenion said that if he were Alexander, he would accept the terms of Darius. The king shot back that he would accept them as well—if he were Parmenion. Instead, Alexander wrote back to Darius saying that he had all the money he needed without the Great King’s ransom and that he could marry his captive daughter any time he chose without her father’s permission. As for the lands Darius offered, they were nothing compared to the empire he was going to conquer. Lydia, Cilicia, and Phoenicia were just the beginning. Media, Persia, and even India were all going to be his. He dismissed the envoys with a final word for Darius that they would soon meet again in battle.

  The only obstacle left for Alexander on his journey to Egypt was the fortress town of Gaza on the coastal plain at the edge of the Negev desert. Like Troy, it was an ancient hilltop town near the sea built on the layers of its own past. Since the days of the Philistines, it had dominated caravan traffic deep into Arabia. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh all passed through its markets, which Herodotus considered one of the largest in Asia. It was once ruled by the pharaohs, but had passed in turn to the Assyrians, Babylonians, and finally the Persians. The Great King’s governor at Gaza, a eunuch named Batis, was confident the Macedonians could not take his city. Behind his high walls he had ample water and grain to sustain a long siege. Moreover, he had hired Arab mercenaries hardened to desert fighting. In spite of Alexander’s success at Tyre and the terrible consequences to its inhabitants, Batis dared Alexander to try to take Gaza.

  As the king and his engineers rode around the city the first day, they had to admit that it would be very difficult to capture. The town sat so far above the plain that the Macedonian siege engines could not reach the walls. Therefore Alexander commanded his men to build a mound completely around the city equal to it in height. When complete, he would place towers on this rampart and storm the city. It was a monumental task for his soldiers, who had just spent months building a causeway across the sea to Tyre, but they followed orders.

  One morning during construction when Alexander was sacrificing below the city, a bird of prey swooped down on him and dropped a stone it was carrying in its talons. The king turned to his soothsayer Aristander to interpret this omen. The old prophet said that Alexander would take the city in time, but he must not fight that day. The king reluctantly obeyed the will of the gods, but when the Arab mercenaries made an unexpected foray against the Macedonians that afternoon, Alexander could not help but rush to the front lines of the fight. He was almost immediately hit by an arrow fired from a catapult that pierced his shield and went straight through his armor into his shoulder. The king cursed his luck but ordered the wound dressed and continued the fight, at least until he collapsed unconscious from loss of blood. Batis and the people of Gaza rejoiced, thinking he had been killed.

  Alexander was not dead, but he was very angry. When the siege towers he used at Tyre at last arrived by ship, the king ordered his engineers to put them in place on the ramparts they had constructed. The Macedonians then launched a massive assault on the city that was driven back three times by the defenders. Then Alexander, in spite of his bandaged shoulder, led his troops in a fourth assault that finally breached the walls. The people of Gaza fought as bravely against the invaders as had the citizens of Tyre, but they could not stand against the fury of the Macedonians. All the men of Gaza died at their posts defending their city, but the women and children were captured and sold into slavery. A badly wounded but still defiant Batis was brought before Alexander, who threatened him with cruel punishments if he would not bow down before him. The eunuch merely gazed at the king in contempt. Then Alexander in his anger did something so horrific that most ancient historians omit the episode altogether. In the Iliad, Achilles took the body of his slain Trojan opponent Hector and dragged it around the Greek camp behind a chariot. Alexander now took Batis, still alive, lashed his ankles with leather thongs, tied him to his own chariot, and pulled him through the rocky desert around the city of Gaza until long after he was dead.

  Alexander summoned local Bedouin tribes to rebuild and repopulate Gaza as a fortress, this time under Macedonian control. He sent his fleet ahead, then advanced with his army into the coastal deserts of the northern Sinai. It was November, so the days were cool and pleasant, but there were still difficulties. Water was scarce along the way and the paths around brackish Lake Serbonis on the final stretch were notorious for quicksand. But six days after leaving Gaza, Alexander came to the frontier town of Pelusium. Here almost two centuries earlier, the Persian king Cambyses, son of Cyrus the Great, had defeated the army of the pharaoh. Herodotus saw the bones of both sides still bleaching in the sun when he visited many years later. Here at Pelusium, the easternmost branch of the Nile flowed into the Mediterranean. And it was here that Alexander entered Egypt, a land that would change his life forever.

  5

  EGYPT

  IN MY ACCOUNT OF EGYPT, I WILL GIVE A

  LONGER DESCRIPTION WITH MANY MORE

  FACTS THAN USUAL BECAUSE THIS COUNTRY

  HAS MORE MONUMENTS AND WONDERS

  THAN ANY OTHER LAND.

  —HERODOTUS

  Almost everything Alexander knew about Egypt came from the writings of Herodotus, the Greek historian of the previous century who wrote of things he saw along the Nile during his travels, as well as recording quite a few facts and secondhand stories of a more dubious nature. Herodotus knew that the Nile valley flooded every year, depositing rich alluvial soil on the fertile fields on either side of the river, but he did not know why this happened. He reports that an earlier pharaoh discovered the original language of humanity by secluding two newborn children among mutes until they uttered their first word, which presumably would be in the tongue of our earliest ancestors (it was bekos, the Phrygian word for “bread”). Herodotus also records that the Egyptians venerated cats and frequently mummified them. He overstates the siz
e of Nile crocodiles, but relates they can be caught by using a small pig as bait. He was fascinated by the pyramids and passes on the tale he heard from Egyptian priests on how they were built. He had a particular interest in Egyptian religion, claiming that the Greeks learned many of their sacred rituals from Egypt. He also writes of the divine origins of the great oracle of Zeus-Ammon in the distant western oasis of Siwa. Alexander had grown up hearing stories of this sacred site that the Persian king Cambyses had once tried to destroy, only to lose fifty thousand men to a sandstorm. For Alexander, Egypt must have been a land of wonder and mystery.

  Egypt was such an ancient kingdom that the great pyramids of Giza were almost as old to Alexander as he is to us. Farmers had already lived on the banks of the Nile for several thousand years when, according to tradition, Menes united the kingdoms of upper (southern) and lower (northern) Egypt at the end of the fourth millennium B.C. The Old Kingdom began a few centuries later with a highly centralized government under the pharaohs. Soon the rulers of Egypt were commissioning grand monuments and establishing diplomatic ties with kingdoms in Mesopotamia and beyond. After the collapse of the Old Kingdom, there was a period of localized rule until the pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom reestablished authority over the whole country. A people known as the Hyksos later seized control of the northern Nile valley, but the New Kingdom arose in the middle of the second millennium B.C. and extended its power all the way to the Euphrates River. Hatshepsut, a woman of royal blood, ruled as pharaoh during this period, as did Tutankhamun and the long-lived Rameses the Great, famous for the colossal rock-cut statues he built at Abu Simbel as well as his war against the Hittites of Asia Minor. But during the age of the Trojan War, the mysterious Sea People attacked Egypt from the north, ushering in a long period of decline and foreign incursions from Nubians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and finally the Persians.

  The Great King Cambyses conquered Egypt in the late sixth century B.C. and initiated a century of ill will when he burned temples throughout the country and killed the sacred Apis bull at Memphis in a fit of anger. The Persians were thereafter seen as impious oppressors who mocked Egyptian religious traditions and bled the country dry through high taxes and grain levies. Finally, after decades of Persian rule, the Egyptians revolted and drove out the Great King’s troops. For sixty years Egypt was independent until Artaxerxes III led the Persian army into the land once more. The last native pharaoh of Egypt, Nectanebo, fled south to Nubia and a satrap was appointed to once again impose the will of the Great King.

  Two years had passed since the Macedonians crossed into Asia. Alexander’s fleet had followed him down the coast of the Sinai to Pelusium, where the king found the ships anchored in the Nile. Also waiting for him was Mazaces, the recently appointed Persian ruler of Egypt. His predecessor, Sabaces, had taken most of the Great King’s army from the province to Issus a year earlier. Since Sabaces and many of his soldiers had died in battle there, Mazaces decided that discretion was the better part of valor and surrendered the entire province to Alexander without a fight. To win the favor of Alexander and, he surely hoped, save his own life, Mazaces also brought along the entire treasury and all the royal furniture he could load into carts. In one day, the Macedonian king had added a province larger and far wealthier than all of Greece to his growing empire.

  But even though the Persian garrison in Egypt had surrendered to him, Alexander realized that truly possessing the land would require the utmost in tact and diplomacy. The Egyptians could well seize this moment to stage another of their revolts against the new foreign overlord. Alexander had to proceed very carefully in order to have the Egyptians accept him willingly as their ruler, but to do this he had to have the priests on his side. Alexander therefore dedicated the next few months to showing the people of the Nile valley that he not only respected their religion but was an enthusiastic supporter of the Egyptian gods.

  Sending his fleet up the Nile, Alexander and his army marched through the endlessly flat plains of the Nile delta. The army moved along with the Nile on their right and the barren desert on their left. They passed fields of wheat and barley, date and fig trees, cattle and fishermen, and vast stands of papyrus used for making the most prized writing material in the ancient world. Along the way villages of farmers and local nobility welcomed the new king, although with his army beside him they had little choice. Alexander passed through the land of Goshen, where stories said the Hebrews had once settled after a famine in their homeland. He also passed the site of Avaris, where almost a thousand years earlier Rameses had built a glorious city only to have it swallowed up in time by desert sands.

  After a week of traveling along the river, Alexander came to the ancient city of Heliopolis, a center for learning and priestly activities in Egypt for millennia. Here on a raised mound where the easternmost branch of the Nile met the main channel of the river was the celebrated temple of Ra, known to the Greeks as the sun god Helios. The king surely treated the priests at Heliopolis with great respect—in pointed contrast to the Persian king Cambyses, who had tried to destroy the holy site and tear down the nearby obelisks.

  Across the Nile just a day’s journey south of Heliopolis was Memphis. Ever since the earliest days of the Old Kingdom, the city had been the most important religious center in lower Egypt. Even when the capital was elsewhere, pharaohs still maintained palaces at Memphis and lavishly supported the city’s priesthood and temples. In the western part of the town was the step pyramid of Saqqara, the first of these great structures built in Egypt. Just beyond Saqqara on the edge of the floodplain were miles of elaborate tombs. The city proper was also a commercial center well known to the Greek world, but it was most famous for its temple of the creator god Ptah. His earthly manifestation was the sacred Apis bull, a carefully chosen animal cared for in the courtyard of the temple. Pilgrims would come from all over Egypt to seek the blessing of the bull at Memphis. When each Apis died, it was embalmed and carried to a special burial chamber at Saqqara.

  For the Great King to have killed the Apis bull in the previous century was a sacrilege beyond belief and a deed the Egyptians would never forget. It was therefore with great reverence that Alexander approached the temple of Ptah and offered copious sacrifices to the god, in deliberate contrast with the Persian ruler. The priests could not have been more pleased. And although the best ancient sources do not confirm it, it is likely that Alexander was now crowned pharaoh of Egypt. Statues of the king in Egypt soon show him dressed as lord of Upper and Lower Egypt, while inscriptions name him as beloved of Ra, son of Amun. Then, to celebrate his new status and to entertain the local population as well as his own troops, Alexander had previously arranged for the most famous athletes and musicians from Greece to meet him at Memphis. There Egyptians and Macedonians alike feasted and drank, cheered on races and wrestling contests, enjoyed comedies and tragedies onstage, and listened to choruses singing, all on a beautiful winter’s day on the banks of the Nile surrounded by the glorious monuments of Egyptian history. It must have been spectacular.

  The ancient historians who wrote about Alexander’s Egyptian campaign are in disagreement about where the king went from Memphis. Some say he immediately headed north along the Nile toward the Mediterranean. But other sources claim he desired to travel south to see the ancient palaces and monuments of Upper Egypt. There are also fragmentary reports that he sent Aristotle’s nephew Callisthenes deep into Ethiopia to seek the source of the Nile. None of these accounts is implausible because Alexander was intensely curious about the lands of his empire and realms beyond. A quick dash upriver to Egyptian Thebes or even to the first cataract near Aswan would not have taken more than a few weeks. Thebes would have been especially attractive as a key center of religious life in Egypt, as well as the site of many of the grandest temples in the Nile valley. To strengthen his rule in the south of the country and establish firm ties with the priestly class there, Alexander would certainly have considered a brief journey up the Nile a wise investment of his time. />
  Whether Alexander traveled south or remained in Memphis during these weeks, by January he was on his way north to the sea. Along this journey, only a short day’s sail down the Nile, was the plateau of Giza just above the river to the west. There the three greatest pyramids of Egypt towered over the surrounding desert while the crouching Sphinx gazed unblinking toward the rising sun as it had for more than two thousand years. Oddly, none of the ancient sources mention Alexander visiting these famous monuments, but it is inconceivable that he would not have stopped to tour the site. A thousand years later most of the white limestone casing covering the pyramids would be stripped away for building materials, but during Alexander’s visit the monuments would still have shone brightly in the morning sun. The king would have walked up the long causeway linking the Nile to the pyramid complex, then stared in wonder at these artificial mountains, each made of several million giant stones fitted together perfectly. Herodotus said the blocks were lifted up level by level with machines, but Alexander must have doubted this explanation given the obvious weight of the massive stones. If he entered the pyramids and made his way through the narrow, claustrophobic tunnels into the interior, he would have found the burial chambers of the ancient pharaohs long ago looted by grave robbers. Once back in the fresh air, Alexander could have toured smaller pyramids and temples in the complex as well, but he would not have missed the Great Sphinx. Over fifty feet high and carved from the living rock at the site, this looming figure with a man’s head and a lion’s body has always looked as if it were about to speak. Alexander surely remembered the story of young Oedipus, who was posed a riddle by a sphinx: What has four legs when young, two when grown, and three when aged? The creature killed those who were at a loss for the answer, but Oedipus knew it was a human being, who crawled as a baby, walked on two legs when grown, and used a cane when old. The Sphinx, however, asked Alexander no questions, but continued its eternal vigil as the king made his way back to the Nile.