Alexander the Great in Egypt. Lecture of 24 November 2010

I attended this fascinating lecture about Alexander the Great in Egypt. It was given by Prof. Olaf Kaper at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam. He had my undivided attention since he has been working on the site of Siwah for several years, and he managed to give me the information I wasn't aware of before.

He started introducing Alexander the Great with his itinerary from Pella across the Hellespont, mentioning the battlefields of Granicus and Issus and the siege of Tyre and Gaza until he arrived in Pelusium, his first city in Egypt. From here, he went to Memphis, the capital of Egypt in his days, where he received a delegation from Cyrene that brought him horses among their gifts. When I was in Cyrene (now in Libya), I remember how their horses in antiquity were praised for their stamina, especially on a battlefield, so it felt like meeting up with old friends. The speaker speculated that this may have been an invitation for Alexander to visit Cyrene, a Greek colony at that time. In any case, it has to be clarified whether Alexander was heading for Cyrene or already for Siwah when he left Memphis for the northern coastline when he chose the location to build Alexandria. He must have traveled along the mainstream of the Nile to Naucratis, another Greek city that lived off the commerce with the Egyptian hinterland, before turning westward. 

The choice for the location of Alexandria is, geographically speaking, excellent, with the natural outline of a harbor and an inland lake with fresh water. Strangely enough, I heard from Richard Miles on BBC that these waters were brackish, a huge mistake of Alexander. It would have been Ptolemy's doing to build a 30 km long canal to the Nile and appropriate underground cisterns to provide the necessary water for the city! I can't believe Alexander would make such a mistake, for whoever in his right mind would found a city where there is no water? Certainly not Alexander! Besides, the cisterns shown in this documentary looked Roman to me. Back to the lecture, though, we are shown a few pictures with temple remains of Paraetonium, another Greek colony on the Mediterranean, from where Alexander turns south towards Siwah – leaving Cyrene for what it was.

Olaf Kaper then draws a comparison and parallel between the Temple of Zeus-Ammon in Cyrene, built in Greek style (note that this temple in Cyrene is larger than the Parthenon in Athens!), and the Temple of Ammon-Zeus in Siwah, built in Egyptian style. Yet the temple of Siwah shows several Greek characteristics, like the intermittent use of large and small stones in the walls and the half-Doric columns at the entrance, for instance. He assumes that Greek architects from Cyrene were hired to build the Siwah temple. Then follow a couple of views of the empty desert landscape, a stretch of 300 kilometers which Alexander and his close companions covered on horseback in eight days, getting lost a couple of times, as we know… Then there are some great pictures of the Siwah oasis, which turns out to be more than 60 km wide! I had no idea of the size! 

We know that Alexander entered the Temple of Siwah alone, but now I'm told that the temple was used only to ask the question(s) to the god, whereas the answer(s) was(were) given in the temple on the opposite hill! The announcements there were a public affair, so Alexander's entourage must have heard the god's answers, although they may not have known the questions … There was a holy road connecting both hills of which little or nothing remains today. The temple on top of the hill across the temple of Siwah itself is almost entirely gone, except for a few low walls. They were relatively complete until the end of the 19th century when the local governor decided to blow them up to use the stones for his own house. Yet, don't know where that was or is …

I also learned something new about the picture of Zeus with the ram's horns. It seems that this custom was born in Cyrene for Ammon-Zeus (Ammon, the Libyan god, is spelled with double mm, while the Egyptian Amon is written with one m). The idea has traveled from Cyrene to Egypt and has reached Alexander in the process. When I later returned to the Hermitage Museum, I noticed a coin of the “old” Ammon-Zeus with horns that looked something like these examples: 

          

And there is more exciting news, at least for me. When Alexander left Siwah, he traveled East towards the Nile along a known road, which he was told was shorter. That road runs from one oasis to the next. In the second oasis after Siwah, archaeologists have recently discovered a Greek Temple dedicated to Alexander with several inscriptions and pictures related to the great man! Unbelievable and unexpected. 

My knowledgeable speaker also mentions Alexander's instructions to rebuild the "bark" area of the temples of Karnak and Thebe, in fact, the sacred inner area of the temple that held the bark in which the god was carried around on heydays. He also had beautiful photographs of some walls in Karnak where hieroglyphic inscriptions referred to King Philip Arrhidaeus. I have no idea why he is being mentioned here, and I forgot to ask Olaf Kaper… sorry. 

And to conclude, Olaf Kaper warmly recommends the book Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher, a contemporary story in the oasis of Siwah and gives an excellent idea of the location. So more reading material is to be put on my wish list!