"The troops of the king deserted him"

These are the words that appear on a clay tablet written by a contemporary eyewitness in Babylon after the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC.

[Picture from Livius site]

This cuneiform clay tablet belongs to the Astronomical Diary that was kept in the temple of the Babylonian god Marduk. These diaries contain not only daily observations of the sky but also all kinds of information about the current political events, the level of the Euphrates and Tigris, the food prices and other various news, as well as the meteorological records. Over the past two centuries, millions of these tablets have surfaced from all over Mesopotamia and the majority has not yet been deciphered, leaving us with wide lacunas.

Yet, with bits and pieces, we are able to extract useful information from these tables, like, for instance, the exact date of Alexander’s death on 11 June 323 BC.

In the frame of Battle of Gaugamela, these inscriptions suggest that the Persian soldiers were demoralized and that “the troops of the king deserted him”. These lines shed a very different light on the battle as recorded by Greek historians who wrote that Darius left his soldiers. It makes us wonder whether instead of an act of bravery or military genius on Alexander’s part, the battle was won thanks to the bribes of some of Darius’ generals, including Mazaeus (see: Two key afterthoughts on Gaugamela).

Due to the complexity of the battle, the vastness of the plain and the heavy dust that whirled around, nobody could actually have a consistent view of the maneuvers and clashes. Yet at the end of the day, the Macedonians were master of the field. Callisthenes, a nephew of Aristotle who had been appointed by Alexander to keep his official diary, could hardly have actually seen any part of the battle. He too had to rely on the accounts given by the Macedonians at that time. Although later historians like Arrian, Diodorus, Curtius and even Plutarch had access to his records, we have no way to verify what and how he originally told the events since his books are lost to us.

The cuneiform tablet which started this post is in the hands of the British Museum and has been closely studied by specialists. For me, there are three lines that are important in the frame of the decisive battle of Gaugamela, which I reproduce hereafter in my own simplified version:

That month, the eleventh [corresponding to 18 September 331 BC], panic occurred in the camp before the king. The Macedonians encamped in front of the king [must be Darius at Arbela].

The twenty-fourth [corresponding to 1 October 331 BC], in the morning, the king of the world [meaning Alexander as King of Asia] erected his standard [lacuna]. Opposite each other they fought and a heavy defeat of the troops. The king, his troops deserted him and to their cities [they went] They fled to the land of the Guti.[meaning the road to Ecbatana]

On the eleventh [corresponding to 18 October 331 BC], in Sippar [this is just north of Babylon] an order of Alexander to the Babylonians was sent as follows: 'Into your houses I shall not enter.'

For the complete text and pertaining comments, please refer to the site of Livius at this link and/or this link.

Based on the above, the least we can say is that we know only part of history and certainly only a tiny portion of what really happened that day of the battle on the dusty plain of Gaugamela.