But he had shared in Alexander’s tribulations as well as in his good fortunes. In the Pixodarus affair, Alexander had nearly been gulled into marrying the daughter of one of the heirs of King Mausolus, whose capital at Halicarnassus Alexander would later besiege. It was a match Philip knew to be inappropriate, and he managed to forbid it despite Alexander’s having apparently already agreed. For this the prince and his mentors, including Ptolemy, were exiled, only to return upon the old king’s death.
This turbulent childhood and youth molded Ptolemy into an extraordinarily shrewd young man, and his prince’s ablest companion, as they set out to conquer the world together. He had been appointed one of Alexander’s seven personal bodyguards and had played key roles in the campaigns in Afghanistan and India, although Arrian’s descriptions of his heroics (drawn from Ptolemy’s own account of Alexander’s life) betray a tendency to exaggerate his importance. But most important of all, Ptolemy had learned to watch and wait, to see but remain silent. That was the great advantage he had over his old friend Alexander. Ptolemy was not in a hurry.
After Alexander’s death the situation became delicate, and, having been with Alexander at Siwa and in Memphis, Ptolemy knew the Egyptian people had to be treated carefully if he was to retain their loyalty in the dangerous years ahead. As such he made no pretense of kingship, made no bid for the pharaonic throne so recently vacated by his friend and master. Instead he contented himself with the old Persian title “satrap”—effectively making himself governor of Egypt.
Even this careful move did not leave him without enemies. Alexander had appointed a man called Cleomenes to administer the delta area and raise the funds for the building of Alexandria. Cleomenes was a business-man, an extortionist, and a crook. Of those who wrote about him none had a good word to say for him. Demosthenes called him a “dishonest manipulator,” while Arrian pulled even fewer punches and just branded him “an evil man.” The cause of such hatred was, at least in part, his sheer success. He had been so successful indeed, and felt so confident, that he had declared himself satrap while Alexander was still in India. On returning, the king had admonished him for his presumption but, extraordinarily, hadn’t dismissed him for it—he’d generated far too much money for that.
As part of the initial settlement among Alexander’s generals upon his death, Ptolemy had now taken the title of satrap of Egypt for himself, but in doing so he was taking a risk. Alexander’s empire was crumbling and Cleomenes had already shown that he had the nerve to take on the Macedonian state. How long would this hugely wealthy individual put up with Ptolemy as his master? For now this powerful but increasingly unpopular man could not be unseated, so in taking the title satrap for himself, Ptolemy appointed Cleomenes as his assistant (hyparchos). Most likely neither felt content with this, but the final resolution would have to wait.
And waiting is what Ptolemy was becoming good at. The end of Alexander’s reign had been marked by confusion, and time seems to have done little to clarify the situation. As such the preparations for Alexander’s body’s final journey home were anything but quick. Indeed it was two years before news came from Babylon that the sarcophagus of Alexander was finally on the move.
The procession must have made quite an impression. The king’s body had been placed inside two golden caskets, the outer one draped with a purple robe on which lay Alexander’s armor. This coffin was then mounted on a specially constructed golden carriage with a vaulted roof supported by slender Ionic columns. Diodorus describes the scene:
At the top of the carriage was built a vault of gold, eight cubits wide and twelve long, covered with overlapping scales set with precious stones. Beneath the roof, all along the work was a rectangular cornice of gold from which projected heads of goat-stags in high relief. Gold rings two palms broad were suspended from these, and through the rings there ran a festive garland beautifully decorated in bright colours of all kinds. At the ends there were tassels of network suspending large bells, so that any who were approaching heard the sound from a great distance. On each corner of the vault on each side was a golden figure of Victory holding a trophy.
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, book 18, chapter 26
But that was only the beginning. Diodorus goes on to explain how the carriage lavishly advertised the already partly mythical achievements of Alexander: On the vault over Alexander’s body was strung a golden net on which were suspended long painted tablets, one on each side. On the first of these was a chariot carved in relief, on which sat Alexander, scepter in hand, surrounded by Macedonian and Persian attendants. On the second tablet were carved war elephants complete with mahouts and regular Macedonian troops. The third tablet portrayed Alexander’s impressive cavalry in battle formation, while the fourth showed his navy, ready for combat. At the entrance to the chamber itself there were golden lions whose eyes, so Diodorus tells us, turned to watch those who would enter this holy of holies. Above the chamber, he adds,
there was a purple banner blazoned with a golden olive wreath of great size and when the sun cast upon it its rays, it sent forth such a bright and vibrant gleam that from a great distance it appeared like a flash of lightning.
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, book 18, chapter 26
Here then, condensed into one fabulous vehicle, was the achievement of Alexander—a glittering advertisement for all that he had been and all that he could have been. Its single remaining task was to bear away the body of the man whose life it portrayed. Finally, in 321 BC the carriage, drawn by sixty-four mules and accompanied by a great procession, wound its way through the streets of Babylon and out into the countryside beyond. The question now was, where was it going?
Ancient historians cannot agree on where Alexander himself wanted to be buried, but that is perhaps hardly surprising when his heirs couldn’t agree either, though each would claim he was doing Alexander’s will. The traditional burial place for a king of Macedon was the ancient capital of Lower Macedonia, Aigai on the slopes of the Pierian Mountains in what is now northern Greece. Here, by the modern village of Vergina, lie the remains of a great Macedonian palace whose veranda once commanded a majestic view over the plains of the Haliakmon River, and where, among the ruins of the temple of Eukleia, can still be found the bases of two votive statues dedicated by Alexander’s grandmother Queen Eurydice. All around among the elm trees can be seen the memorials of ancient Macedonians of all classes and levels of fame, right up to the magnificent royal tombs of the Great Tumulus, whose contents are now impressively housed in their own subterranean museum. Here lie the finds from the “tomb of Philip II,” discovered in 1977, perhaps the last resting place of Alexander’s father, although more recent archaeological work suggests that perhaps it is the tomb of his simple half brother Philip III Arrhidaeus. But whoever the occupant actually was, this was clearly the last resting place of Alexander’s ancestors and hence perhaps as close as this restless soul might have come to a final home.
But other thoughts had crowded into Alexander’s mind in his last years. The trip to Siwa had given him alternative and far more illustrious ancestors—the gods of Egypt. While we do not know to what degree Alexander actually believed that he was a god, Diodorus says his last wish was to be buried not with his earthly ancestors in Aigai, but at Siwa, where he could be with his divine father, Ammon.
But with Alexander dead there were considerations far greater than his dying wishes—indeed all his last wishes were soon forgotten. Whatever he believed or wanted his people to believe, the mummified contents of his golden coffin were worth as much as the coffin itself—literally its weight in gold—wherever it finally ended up.
When the procession left Babylon, that body was nominally under the control of Philip III Arrhidaeus, but as such it must, in truth, have been under the control of Perdiccas. Perdiccas, one of Alexander’s faithful bodyguards, had, according to some ancient sources, been given Alexander’s ring on his deathbed—as close as the great man came to nominating an heir. Since th
en he had done his best to try to hold the whole of his old master’s dream together—to keep the empire as one entity. Of course he was not ruling in his own right, merely as regent for the dead king’s simple half brother and infant son, but he was certainly in control. So we must imagine that the procession struck out for Aigai, in the lands directly ruled by the people over whom Perdiccas had control. But they would not stay that way for long.
Ptolemy was clearly tipped off about the removal of Alexander’s body, and he acted quickly. As the funerary cortege wound its way across Asia Minor back toward Macedon, Ptolemy struck, possibly in or near Damascus. Seizing control of the somber procession, he ordered it to turn south down the Mediterranean coast and across Sinai into Egypt. Alexander wasn’t going home to Macedon, he was going back to the city he’d founded by the island of Pharos, and there, though dead, he was going to found a new empire—not a crude military conquest but an empire of the mind.
The kidnapping of the body of Alexander was Ptolemy’s masterstroke. While the other generals still jostled for wealth and position in the Near East and Persia, he had realized that the one treasure still worth having was the body of the king himself. Ptolemy had decided that Alexander would quite literally be the centerpiece of the new Egyptian empire he planned to rule, and where better to rule from than the city his old master and friend had founded?
But again patience was necessary. Alexandria was not yet a thriving city and Egypt was not yet so pliable that its people would accept anything their satrap ordered. Ptolemy needed the Egyptians to believe in him and what he stood for. He knew dangerous times were coming. Having stolen the body of Alexander he had finally severed his links with Perdiccas, showing clearly that he had no belief in the maintenance of Alexander’s empire as one coherent entity. He had effectively shouted “Every man for himself ” and must have known that Perdiccas would now come after him and the treasure he had taken for his own.
Egyptian protocols now had to be carefully followed. After a sweltering journey across Sinai, Ptolemy ordered that the body first be taken to the old pharaonic capital of Memphis, twelve miles south of the modern Egyptian capital of Cairo, and interred in an Egyptian-style tomb near his divine “father,” Ammon, while work on both his Alexandrian tomb and his city progressed.
Memphis was a city of pharaohs, an ancient center of Egyptian religion and regal power, and the place where Alexander had been crowned king. This had been Egypt’s first great city in what, even then, was the distant past. Legend had it that it had been created by the founder of the Old Kingdom, Menes, close to the necropolis at Saqqara, where the first pyramids had been built. Since then its fortunes had waxed and waned, having lost its role as capital in 1300 BC and having only recently returned to prominence under the Persian satraps. But for Ptolemy’s purpose what Memphis had in its favor was history. When the funeral procession of Alexander wound through the gates, it was entering a city that was already 2,750 years old.
The presence of his body here announced that he had been a legitimate heir to the pharaohs who had built this place; that he had supported the priests of Ptah here; that he had honored the Apis bull, Egypt’s most sacred animal, who lived here; and that he had respected the ancient temple system that ran the country. His burial in an Egyptian-style tomb was also of the greatest importance. This spoke to Egyptians, telling them that Egypt—long-suffering, invaded, and despoiled Egypt—was what had mattered most to Alexander and that the greatest general for centuries, perhaps of all time, had known that his spiritual home was here in the greatest of ancient civilizations. That alone proved to them that he must have been born of the Egyptian gods, and reminded them that they were once, and would be again, a great nation.
But Ptolemy did not intend to leave Alexander in Memphis. This ancient city in the delta was not ideally suited as the capital of the type of modern state he had in mind, and the monolithic religious presence there might prove stifling to his plans. Though he wanted to rule Egypt in a way Egyptians understood, this did not extend to being a puppet of Egyptian officials and priests in Memphis. No, the site for his new capital had to be Alexandria. Not only had this place been selected by the divine Alexander himself but it also fulfilled Ptolemy’s strategic and cultural requirements. Ptolemy needed a capital that had access to the Mediterranean world, the Greek world, which could dominate trade and diplomacy as well as grant a military advantage against enemies. He needed a port which had access to Egyptian wealth and that of the world beyond. Ancient Egypt had often been an inward-looking culture, suspicious of foreign contact. Ptolemy intended to plug it into the Greek world and in the process reinvent it.
There were also purely military considerations. This Egypt was not going to be part of a greater empire. Ptolemy had seen firsthand how difficult it was to rule vast territories with their huge cultural differences. He instead chose a place with one cultural identity, but he would have to defend it from the other heirs of Alexander who still believed in Alexander’s dream and would, no doubt, attempt to bring Egypt back into the fold. As Egypt’s wealth was the Nile Valley, this meant protecting the country’s flanks, setting up buffer zones in the east and west to prevent attacks across Sinai or from the other city-states along the Libyan coast. For this Alexandria was ideally situated, so he urged its builders on.
The man charged with laying out Alexander’s city was Dinocrates of Rhodes, who hence takes his place as the first in that long line of Alexandrian scholars. He had the task of following with surveyors where Alexander had once strode with barley flour, placing temples here and palaces there with the sweep of his hand and turning that vague idea into functioning reality. As the city’s planner he devised a design based on the principles of the great Greek architect Hippodamus of Miletus, the man who had been employed by the Athenians to build their harbor at Piraeus. Hippodamus had been a flamboyant character, if the none-too-flattering sketch furnished by Aristotle can be relied upon:
Hippodamus, the son of Euruphon a Milesian, contrived the art of laying out towns. . . . This man was in other respects too eager after notice, and seemed to many to live in a very affected manner, with his flowing locks and his expensive ornaments, and a coarse warm vest which he wore, not only in the winter, but also in the hot weather.
Aristotle, Politics, part 8
Despite these affectations Hippodamus and his school were held in high regard when it came to planning towns. For them town planning was about much more than just laying out public squares and markets. For them the job of an architect also included suggesting how a town should function, what the structure of its government should be, and how its citizens should work together for the common good. Aristotle, in a more generous mood, tells us that Hippodamus was
the first who, not being actually engaged in the management of public affairs, set himself to inquire what sort of government was best; and he planned a state, consisting of ten thousand persons, divided into three parts, one consisting of artisans, another of husbandmen, and the third of soldiers; he also divided the lands into three parts, and allotted one to sacred purposes, another to the public, and the third to individuals.
Aristotle, Politics, part 8
He even seems to have gone as far as suggesting the rudiments of a welfare state, when he
made a law, that those should be rewarded who found out anything for the good of the city, and that the children of those who fell in battle should be educated at the public expense; which law had never been proposed by any other legislator, though it is at present in use at Athens as well as in other cities.
Aristotle, Politics, part 8
Of course Hippodamus had rarely had the opportunity to build a city from scratch, having instead to change towns piecemeal and persuade their inhabitants of the merits of his ideas. At Alexandria, however, Dinocrates had a clean slate, and as he paced the burning sand he must have thought of not just how to build a city but how to make it work as well.
The physical system Dinocrates built was base
d around a grid of roads, each cell of which was then to be filled in with housing, public buildings, and royal palaces. This gridiron provided the maximum road access and commercial frontage while also allowing for privacy within each cell. It was a simple but hugely innovative design, forgotten in the modern world until recent centuries. Today, of course, it is a plan that forms the backbone of some of the greatest cities on earth, from Tokyo to New York.
The most important work, however, was to create the two sea harbors and for this major engineering work was necessary. This took the form of a 600-foot-wide mole, or causeway, stretching between the mainland and the island of Pharos, which divided the bay in half. As this land bridge was seven times the length of a Greek stadium (around 4,200 feet) it was known as the heptastadion. The heptastadion was cut and bridged at its top and bottom to allow shipping to pass from one harbor to the other. To the east was the Great Harbor, running from the isle of Pharos over the heptastadion, along the coast, and out via another promontory, the Lochias. Across its narrow neck lay dangerous reefs, making the approach extremely difficult; but inside the harbor, shipping was almost entirely protected from the elements. For a ship finding passage into this haven, an extraordinary new vista now opened up. Ahead lay the tiny island of Antirrhodos, with its own miniature royal harbor, and embracing this, the walls of the harbor proper, where the palaces, apartments, and gardens of the royal quarter spilled down to the edge of the sea. Here the still blue waters ran so deep that even the largest ships could tie up at the walls without fear of grounding.
To the west lay the port of Eunostos in the curve from the other end of the Pharos across the heptastadion and on to the mainland coast. With its wide mouth it made for an apparently much easier approach from the sea, but again the harbor opening was littered with reefs and shoals, making sense for any sailor of the port’s name, Eunostos—the “Port of Good Return.” From here there was also a canal cut across to Lake Mareotis. Finally, there was a third, very small sea harbor, on the far side of the island of Pharos itself, known as the Port of Pirates, suitable for small fishing boats perhaps but, thanks to a string of rocks across its entrance, of no use in Dinocrates’ magnificent plan. Nor was the name purely fanciful. The inhabitants of Pharos and the users of her harbor retained something of a reputation for piracy even as the city began to thrive, and ships approaching and leaving port were warned to give the island a wide berth.
The Rise and Fall of Alexandria Page 4
