Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  Historically, the visit to Ammon's oasis has long been the victim of hindsight and legend and nowhere is this plainer than in the disputed motives for the expedition. According to Callisthenes, who wrote what Alexander wished to be known, 'it was Alexander's glorious ambition to go up to Ammon because he had heard that Perseus and Heracles had gone there before him'; although this rivalry with two Greek heroes was to Alexander's liking, Callisthenes was writing some twenty months after the event. Both Perseus and Heracles were agreed to be sons of the god Zeus and as Alexander was recognized as a son of Zeus after his visit, it made sense for a flatterer to read back the visit's result into his motives for setting out; Callisthenes 'tried to make a god out of Alexander' and gave him the attributes of Zeus, so he presented the Siwah pilgrimage as the rivalry of one son of Zeus with another from the very start. While it is of the first importance that this motive was later to Alexander's liking, Perseus and Heracles are also an interesting pair. Heracles was ancestor of the Macedonian kings and regularly honoured by Alexander, but Perseus appears nowhere else in his myth. It is not even certain that he was previously believed to have visited Siwah. Perhaps he had other attractions; it is a revealing fact about the Greeks that they would trust the simplest puns or word-plays, especially where place names of foreign peoples were concerned. By a pun, foreign names could be linked with the circles of Greek culture and in this sense, it was seriously believed by the Greeks that the Persians were descended from their own Greek hero Perseus, just as the Medes were descended from Medea. This belief was shared by Xenophon who knew and admired the Persians, also by Plato, and Herodotus, and was even upheld by the Persians themselves while, locally after Alexander, Perseus would recur as a symbol of city myths and coinage at many sites in Asia Minor where Greeks and Persians are known to have been living side by side. In short, Perseus became the hero of integration between East and West and for Alexander, the first king ever to rule both peoples at once, a rivalry with Perseus and Heracles was not irrelevant. In Greek eyes, they were his ancestors as the Persian and the Macedonian king, and when Callisthenes wrote up the visit to Siwah, Alexander had already replaced Darius as king of Asia and come to be heir to both heroes at once. A year and a half before, when he set out for Siwah, the two of them are unlikely to have weighed heavily on his mind.

  Others took the theme further. Besides the rivalry with Greek heroes, 'Alexander set out for Ammon with the added intention', wrote the Roman Arrian, possibly taking his cue from Ptolemy's history, 'of learning about himself more accurately or at least of saying that he had so learnt.' This personal problem was connected already with his parentage, 'for he was referring a part of his birth to Ammon', and this belief can be most naturally explained by his new position as Pharaoh, eventually inherited by Ptolemy. For the Pharaoh was the 'begotten son of Amun-Ra, beloved of Amun'; on this view, Alexander went to the Siwah oasis in Libya in order to find out the meaning of the Pharaoh's titles, a motive which seems as confused as the rivalry with heroes of Greek legend. Why should Libyan Ammon know the truths of Egyptian Amun-Ra and why should the remote Siwah oasis have been brought to Alexander's notice as the place to find the truth? Only if Ammon and Siwah are set in context can the motives for the pilgrimage be narrowed to a plausibility; Ptolemy is known to have added miracles to the visit and his account of its motive is unlikely to be impartial.

  In the god Ammon, the traditions of three different peoples had long combined. Originally the Siwah oasis had been home of a local Libyan god, who may have been related to Baal Hainan of the Carthaginians on his western border; his shrine lay some four weeks' journey from the centre of the Egyptians' kingdom, and it is very possible that for a thousand years, he had never come under the Pharaohs' control. But two hundred years before Alexander, if not earlier, Egypt had mastered Siwah beyond any doubt, and the Pharaoh Amasis is known from hieroglyphics to have built the oracular temple which Alexander was going to visit. The temple's architecture is not distinctively Egyptian, and its carvings show the native Libyan king of the oasis in an independent rank. Egypt, it seems, had merged with Libya, not taken her over completely, and so she was left with a new foreign god to explain. She identified him with her own lord Amun, ram-god and begetter of the universe, married to Mut and father of Khonsu; the ceremonies at Siwah took an Egyptian turn and oracles were given in the Egyptian fashion.

  A third people had also intruded. During Amasis's reign, colonists from Greece had been settling in Cyrene, a Libyan town to the west of the Siwah desert, where they intermarried with the native Berbers and heard of the local divinities. Always attracted by an oracle, they had visited Siwah in its Egyptian phase and given its god the Greek name Ammon, which suggested both the Egyptians' own Amun and the Greek word ammos' or sand, as befitted a god in the desert. Just as Egypt had already equated Siwah's god with her own pre-eminent ram-god Amun, so too the Greeks explained this highly honoured Ammon as a form of their Olympian Zeus, king of the Greek gods. In Cyrene they were soon to build a splendid Doric temple to Zeus Ammon, and to use his features, distinguished by a ram's horn, on the plentiful coinage of the city. The complex origins of the god were established from Greek, Libyan and Egyptian sources and it only remained for him to spread.

  Since 500 B.C. Ammon's expansion had been astonishing. Throughout, it was the Greek city of Cyrene which passed on the god's name to Greece, and it is very striking that Pharaoh Amasis, the first Egyptian known to have taken an interest in Siwah, maintained a Cyrenean mistress. Many of Cyrene's Greek settlers had family links with Sparta on the Greek mainland, so that worship of Ammon soon spread by sea to Sparta's southern harbour town and thence inland; the great shrine of Zeus at Olympia set up a cult of this new Zeus whom Cyrene had discovered, and in the Theban poet Pindar, 130 years before Alexander's visit, Ammon had found his most able publicist. Pindar had visited the King of Cyrene to write a hymn in his honour and had been so impressed with Zeus Ammon that he had set up the god's statue in his home town of Thebes on his return and written him a poem; the priests of Siwah were said to have prayed that Pindar should receive life's greatest blessings, whereupon, in fulfilment, the poet died peacefully. Pindar, moreover, had honoured connections with the Macedonian kings.

  Pindar was not the last of Amnion's famous Greek admirers. Presumably through Cyrene, the family of Lysander the Spartan general had connections with Siwah, and Lysander was to use the god during his career in the late fifth century. While besieging a town on the eastern borders of Macedonia he claimed to have seen Ammon in a dream, and he withdrew from the siege on the god's advice, so unexpectedly that the defending city set up a cult of Ammon in gratitude, which Alexander may have known from his nearby home before he ever reached Egypt. Athens, meanwhile, had been equally receptive. In the 460s Cimon the Athenian general had tried to consult the Siwah oracle while his fleet was moored near Cyprus; before invading Sicily, the Athenians had sent envoys to do likewise and at least thirty years before Alexander's visit a temple of Zeus Ammon had been built in the Piraeus port, perhaps by merchants who knew the god through the grain-trade with Cyrene. Gold had been sent from Athens to Siwah; Ammon was a recognized oracle among Athenian poets, which was not surprising as the gods' fame had long spread right through Asia Minor, from Cyzicus on the Sea of Marmara to the Lycian kings in the far south, and had entered the islands of the Greek Aegean. Zeus Ammon had spanned the Greek world for more than a hundred years before Alexander set out in search of him, and this background helps to explain his decision.

  As a well-known Greek god, Ammon would have attracted Alexander's attention whether or not he had become Pharaoh at Memphis. Although the ceremonies at Siwah followed an Egyptian pattern, Egypt and the Pharaohs are scarcely known to have troubled the priesthood of the oasis, and no Pharaoh is known to have travelled the 500 miles through desert from Memphis to Siwah, an unnecessary exertion for a man who believed that its semi-Libyan god was a form of his own lord Amun, as Amun had

  more illustrious te
mples within reach of a boat trip down the Nile. Nor was the oracle thought to be an Egyptian puppet. When nearby border tribes had wished to know whether or not to support the Pharaoh, it was Amnion to whom they had sent for impartial advice. There is only one exception to the Pharaoh's apparent disinterest. Some ten years before Alexander's arrival, Nectanebo II, the last independent Pharaoh, had dedicated a secondary temple in the Siwah oasis to the Egyptian Amun-Ra, but as Nectanebo may himself have been of Libyan birth his sudden interest in Siwali is of no consequence for Egyptian policy or for Macedonian Alexander. Siwah was not a convenient or obvious place to learn about the mystique of Amun, even if Alexander had set out with this in mind; it was the Delphi of the Greek East and as a Hellene, not as Pharaoh, Alexander would be curious about a god who was known and patronized by Greeks because of his truthfulness. Zeus Amnion at Siwah was the last available oracle of Greek repute before Alexander led his troops inland into Asia, and Alexander wished to consult him for this simple reason alone. Curiosity, it is agreed, was matched by a spirit of adventure, attracted by the hazards of the journey, and it may be relevant that in a work on Thirst, his tutor Aristotle had told the vivid story of an Argive pilgrim who had starved his body to the limit and travelled many weeks through the desert to Siwah without once drinking water on the way. This feat of endurance might have appealed to his emulous pupil, had it ever been told in the schoolroom.

  But in Egypt, Aristotle seemed far distant and a nearer reminder of Ammon was needed, which owed nothing to the Pharaoh's tides as son of Amun-Ra. While busied with the site of his new city, Alexander had received envoys from Cyrene who invited him to pay their cities a visit, offering him friendship and alliance, 300 horses and five four-horsed chariots. In Arrian's history, suggesting that Alexander set out for Ammon seized by a sudden desire to inquire about himself, this detail is suppressed, probably because he was following the word of King Ptolemy who was ruler, not ally of Cyrene by the time he wrote his history and might not have relished a reference to the city's pact with his predecessor. But it is an important clue, for it was through Cyrene that the Greek world had first come to think highly of Ammon and it was surely the same city's envoys who first reminded Alexander of the god's existence. Very possibly, they did not mention the oasis until Alexander had taken up their offer, gone to visit their cities and reached the town of Paraetonium, 165 miles west of Alexandria and ten miles beyond a usual turning-off point for pilgrims to Siwah. If so, Alexander would have turned west not to consult the god but to follow his envoys from Cyrene and secure his frontier with Libya, an aim which is in keeping with his methods as a general. Only when strategy was satisfied did he think of a detour to Ammon, a familiar and truthful oracle. He did not march from Alexandria as a mystic with a master plan, and as the theme of his divine father only arose by accident at Siwah, from an unpredictable incident 6n the temple steps, it cannot have been his motive for setting out from Alexandria into the desert.

  From Alexandria, he travelled west along the sea-coast with a small group of friends, following the whitened track to Paraetonium. At Paractonium, where Antony was one day to bid farewell to Cleopatra, he took his leave of Cyrene's envoys and set out southwards into the sand, his attendants mounted on camels with water for four days' journey. The sequel cannot be shared without a knowledge of its scenery and fortunately, Alexander's route has often been followed and described, the most telling account being that of Mr Bayle St John, if only because like Alexander he lost his way. In September 1847, having read his ancient texts with care, he equipped himself with camels, Bedouin guides and a moderate supply of water, and added the luxury of brandy and cigars; his notes are most helpful for what follows.

  Soon after leaving Paraetonium, Alexander found himself in a wide expanse of sand, probably because his guides had led him too far west of the direct route which, as St John and others have remarked, should have run over hills of shale. His error was brought home unpleasantly, as a south wind sprang up and whipped across the desert, blinding the travellers in a sandstorm. For four days they wandered as best they could, exhausting their water and intensifying their thirst; supplies had almost run dry when clouds gathered and a sudden storm broke, 'not without the help of the gods,' so they believed, and this enabled them to refill their leather water-bottles.

  On emerging from the sandstorm, they regained the long chain of hills which stretches inland from the sea, rising and falling in valley after valley until the reddish cliffs close in, streaks of white across their grotesque faces, and the final pass winds down a ravine to the sandy plains beyond. For the sake of coolness, Alexander would only move by night, steering by the clearness of the desert stars and trusting in the moon to light him on his way, as close as a man can come to his retreating ideal of silence, all quiet around him except for the faintest desert breeze. Even the ground came alive in the stillness, as the sides and floor of the pass were lined with dried-up shells which attracted the notice of the travellers and, according to St John, reflected the moonbeams till the whole road sparkled, like a mythical valley of Diamonds.

  A gorge black as Erebus lies across the path [he writes], and on the right stands a huge pile of rocks, looking like the fortifications of some vast fabulous city such as Martin would choose to paint or Beckford to describe. There were yawning gateways flanked by bastions of tremendous altitude; there were towers and pyramids and crescents and domes and dizzy pinnacles and majestic crenellated heights, all invested wjth unearthly grandeur by the magic beams of the moon but exhibiting, in wide breaches and indescribable ruin, that they had been battered and undermined by the hurricane, the thunderbolt, the winter torrent and all the mighty artillery of time.

  Amid this Gothic grandeur, Alexander once more lost his way.

  According to Callisthenes, two crows came to his rescue, cawing to round up the stragglers and flying steadily in front until they had set Alexander back on the proper track. Ptolemy, never a man to be outdone, claimed in his history that two talking snakes had acted as guides not only to Siwah but also the whole way back again. These miracles must not be dismissed, though they are a warning that like Alexander, the truth of the Siwah visit was lost from the very start; the travellers did indeed notice many snakes on the way to the oracle, a fact which can be deduced from Theophrastus, pupil of Aristotle, who mentions their numbers in his book on botany, a work which drew its original information from members of Alexander's expedition. As for Callisthenes's crows, they have been sighted since; St John too went astray in the hills and while waiting for his Bedouin guides, he noticed two crows wheeling in the air away to the south-west. Had he followed them, he would have struck the very road he wanted, so it is perhaps no coincidence that the valley in question is still known to natives as the Pass of the Crow.

  From the terrors of the pass, Alexander came down into a plain of sand, too hot for any vegetation, which stretches for some ten miles to the foot of the Milky Mountains. Here, among more cliffsides of the wildest architectural shapes, he followed the road out into the open, passing over a level basin of grey gravel. With a change so typical of the desert, on its far side the gravel falls abruptly into a plain of luxuriant palms, bounded by cliffs on either flank and walled across the middle by isolated rocks of massive shapes and sizes. In this, the oasis of Garah, lay the first cities of the people of Ammon; water, hospitality and shade were at last guaranteed and 'the vivid contrast of barrenness and fertility', writes St John, 'where life and death exert their sway beneath the infinite emblem of immortal serenity, excite mingled emotions of wonder and delight'.

  From these preliminary cities of Ammon, one day's travelling was enough to bring Alexander to the second oasis, site of the Siwah oracle. Though rapid, his journey was no easier, for on leaving the palm-groves of Garah, he would have wound his way up yet another series of gorges, finding himself again on a gravel plateau, flayed by the heat. It is a place of no comforts until at its edge it too falls into one last ravine, only ten miles away from Si
wah, first across valleys of whitened sand, then across land hardened and broken with lumps of natural salt, a rich deposit which the priests of Ammon would pack in baskets and send to the table of the Persian kings. The landscape dazzles the eye, as the salt-fields and dried up salt lakes have all the glare of snowbound glaciers. Before their whiteness can get the better of the traveller the oasis of Siwah has intervened, sweeping its greenness between the remaining pockets of sterility: palms and fruit-trees crowd round the streams, a home for quail and falcons, pomegranates and meadow-grasses, and for ram-headed Ammon, one of the four most truthful oracles known t« the Greek world.

  The oasis is insulated by saltfields and marshes into a space some five miles long and three miles broad. Near its eastern edge, Alexander would come directly to his destination, the citadel now known as Aghurmi which protrudes on a cliff of limestone eighty feet above the plain. At the time of his visit, it was divided into three enclosures, the inner one for the palace of the rulers, the next for their family, their harem and the shrine of the god, the outer one for the guards and barracks. Beside the temple stood a sacred spring in which offerings to the god were purified; this is still visible, connected to the inner courts of the temple. About half a mile to the south-east stood a second shrine, also known to the Egyptians but less patronized by Greek pilgrims, though they knew of its fountain and wrongly believed it to be miraculous, thinking that it alternated between hot and cold at different times of the day. The Greeks, however, had no thermometers. Alexander's officers picked up its native name of Well of the Sun and linked it, characteristically, with their own Greek myth of Phaethon, fallen driver of the Sun's chariot.