All Alexander’s Women. Sisygambis’ Letters by Robbert Bosschart

The title alone made me stop in my tracks: Sisygambis' Letters (ISBN 1439272018)! I got “hooked” on this subject after attending a lecture by Robbert Bosschart at the Zenobia Congress 2010 when I heard his thorough investigation of the women in the life of Alexander the Great for the first time. Besides this book, which is a historic novel, he also wrote another one, All Alexander’s Women, that records his in-depth study of the matter, and I have to admit that I find this quite exciting.

How Bosschart dared talk about “all his women” made me raise my eyebrows at first for Alexander didn’t have that many wives or concubines. But Bosschart is not exactly talking about spouses and mistresses, but rather about the mother figures in Alexander’s life: his own mother Olympias, of course; Queen Ada of Caria; and most of all about Sisygambis, the Queen Mother of Persia. Alexander’s sister Cleopatra also enters the picture, although we know very little about her and most is pure speculation.

This novel gives us a kind of detective story in which a Swiss archaeologist with the significant name of Barsine gets hold of several secret papyri which she is able to decode. These documents turn out to be the private correspondence between Queen Ada and Queen Sisygambis mostly, but there are also a few coded messages written by Alexander personally. This is evidently a very utopian happening, but all in all, through these documents, we are able to shed an entirely new light on the Persian world in which Alexander had to move as a King.

New to me, and this is no fiction, is to hear that women in the East (which includes Persia) were very much emancipated. They occupied high positions, could exercise a profession, and were considered the equals of men! Once you manage to let that knowledge sink in, it is quite amazing and even more unbelievable to realize that thanks to the Romans and the Christian belief we needed more than two thousand years to start the process of emancipation all over again!

Keeping this concept of emancipation in mind, the person of Olympias –whose forefathers came from Troy – is to be seen in an entirely different light. The role of Barsine, the widow of Memnon and mistress of Alexander (she gave him a son, Heracles) cannot be neglected either, particularly if you remember that she spoke Greek and was able to converse with Alexander. Through her, he would have been aware of the protocol at the Persian Court, meaning that when he went to Sisygambis’ tent after the Battle of Issus, he must have known how to carry himself and how to handle this situation with the correct procedure. And let us not forget Queen Ada, who was put back on the throne of Caria by Alexander himself after the siege of Halicarnassus. She was not a queen by name only, but one who had full power to rule. Remember that unlike in other cities, Alexander did not leave a Macedonian garrison behind to have a finger in the pie. That is no small matter!

We are used to looking at Alexander as a conqueror, a fighter, and maybe even as a politician, but rarely as a human being and certainly not in a world where a woman had as much to say as a man. It is an intoxicating thought to even consider what our world would have looked like had Alexander lived long enough to organize his empire taking this aspect into account! We certainly would not have known a Roman Empire, and Christianity would not have spread (or would have spread differently) in a world of religious tolerance and equality between men and women. I am sure the Greeks and more so the Macedonians will have taken great care to leave that knowledge out of their records!

A subject for deep reflection and lengthy discussions, no doubt! This very book, although it is a historic novel, is no less exciting and makes highly entertaining and intriguing reading!