ALEXANDER AND THE EAST
DIMITRIOS PANDERMALIS
THESSALONIKI CULTURAL CAPITAL OF EUROPE 1997
ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI
This guide to the exhibition ALEXANDER AND THE EAST was printed in 3,000 copies in December 1997 under the auspices of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on behalf of “Thessaloniki Cultural Capital of Europe 1997”
Prologue
For two months Thessaloniki is hosting the archeological exhibition Alexander and the East as part of the programme arranged by the Organization of the Cultural Capital of Europe, Thessaloniki 1997.
Splendid works from the East have been brought for the first time to stand beside archeological finds from Macedonia and give a picture of the fascinating world of the advanced civilizations of Asia and Egypt encountered by Alexander in his Panhellenic campaign. It is the world that cast a spell on the young king but also the one which, as far away as distant Baktria, embraced Greek civilization.
Alexander and the East
In 359 BC Philip, father of Alexander the Great, ascended the Macedonian throne. It took more than ten years to tame the wild Illyrians who were a permanent threat to the north-western provinces of his kingdom and to push the bellicose Thracians in the East back beyond the boundary of the river Strymon. The next goal of his foreign policy was to occupy the Straits of the Hellespont and claim hegemony over the southern Greek cities. In the winter of 338/7 BC he succeeded in convening the Council of the Greek League at Corinth, attended by delegates from all the city-states, except the Lakedaimonians. Peace among Greeks was pledged and war declared on the Persians. Although a century and a half had passed since the Persian wars, public opinion considered the matter of satisfaction for the destruction of the great sanctuaries still unsettled. Philip assumed the leadership as “general with absolute powers”. On the eve of the campaign, however, he was assassinated and Alexander III became king of Macedonia. Along with his kingdom, he also inherited the leadership of the Greeks in the war against the Persians.
The Persian state was founded in 559 BC by the Great King Cyrus, a member of the Achaemenid family, and grew into a huge empire stretching from the Hellespont to India and including most of the peoples of the East: Medes, Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Elamites, Lydians, Baktrians, Sogdians, Arabs, Nubians and Egyptians. The Persian empire, however, never acquired homogeneity and the Persians themselves adopted the cuneiform writing and monumental architecture of their subjects. The mountain regions of their dominions had a primitive rural economy whereas along the river valleys and coastal strips commerce was well-developed and industry organized. Persian tradition required the Great King to be ruler of the whole World. This was why Darius I undertook the great campaign to the western borders of the empire in order to subjugate the Greeks and found a new outlying satrapy. However, neither he nor his successor, Xerxes, managed to conquer the Greeks. After the battle of Plataea in 479 BC, the Persians withdrew but did not stop interfering in Greek affairs. When Alexander set out on his great Campaign in the spring of 334 BC, Darius was on the throne at Persepolis. He considered that the power of his satraps was sufficient to ward off the united Greeks under Alexander.
The battle of Granikos (May, 334 BC)
The crossing from Europe to Asia was marked by symbolic acts. In the middle of the straits of the Hellespont Alexander sacrificed a bull to Poseidon and made a libation from a gold dish. When he reached the opposite shore he set up altars and sacrificed to Zeus and Herakles. A little before this he had thrown his spear from the ship to the shore, thus implying that he was conquering Asian territory. At Troy he left a wreath on Achilles’ grave and took the hero’s armour from the temple of Athena, where it was said to have lain since the Trojan War. The first clash with Darius’ satraps occurred at the river Granikos. The Persians took advantage of the steep river bank, and lined up there to hinder Alexander’s landing. He, however, misled the Persians by giving the impression that he would attack with his left flank but suddenly changed course and turned towards their center. In spite of fierce resistance, he won his first victory and this opened the way for the liberation of the cities of Asia Minor from the Persians.
The visit to Priene
The next battle after Granikos took place in the Ionian metropolis of Miletos. When the Persian commander refused to surrender the city, Alexander laid siege to it, captured it and gave it its freedom. Then, at the beginning of the autumn of 334 BC, he visited Priene, an old Greek city which had been inundated by the river Maeander and so had been rebuilt on a steep slope of Mount Mykale. The temple of Athena atop the most visible height was evidence of the king’s generosity, as the dedicatory inscription describes: King Alexander dedicated the temple to Athena Polias. A building in the town was named the Alexandreion in honour of the Macedonian king and consecrated to his worship. Excavations at Priene uncovered a bust of Alexander in one of the first buildings after the western gate. At the entrance a carved inscription says that before a person can enter the sanctuary, he must have been purified and be wearing a white robe.
Alexander in Egypt
The arrival of Alexander in Memphis, the capital of Lower Egypt, was greeted with enthusiasm. Priests and people alike saw him as the liberator from the Persian yoke. The king made a symbolic sacrifice to Apis, the sacred bull of Egypt after which the priests crowned him Pharoah with splendid ceremonial. Alexander, for his part, honoured Zeus with sacrifices and athletic and musical contests, as was the custom in his homeland. Accompanied by an elite guard, Alexander journeyed along the westernmost branch of the Nile until he came to the shore opposite the little island of Pharos, where, according to Homer, Odysseus had stayed with his companions for all of twenty days. Apart from its mythological connections to the earliest age of the Greeks, this place, with its canals, must have reminded him of the seaside lakes and the beloved marshy landscape of Pella, his home.
He decided to build his first Alexandria on a narrow strip of land between the sea and Lake Mareotis. The little offshore island protected the coast from the waves of the open sea while the waters of the lake rose in the summer with the flooding of the Nile, moderating the uncomfortable heat. On 20th January 331 BC Alexander performed the ceremony marking the founding of the city.
Alexandria was designed by Alexander as an autonomous Greek city, which from its foundation allowed Greeks and Egyptians to live together on equal terms. Alexander must have been deeply influenced by his teacher, Aristotle, who believed that the Greek race was graced with courage and intelligence and that if it could ever unite, it would be able to rule the whole world. This dream of a Greek world was what Alexander was beginning to make a reality with the founding of his first eponymous city. After this, the young king got ready for the third stage of his visit to Egypt, a visit to the oracle of Ammon, the chief god of the Egyptians, which lay three hundred kilometers from the Mediterranean coast. With his appearance at the shrine of Ammon, Alexander completed a remarkably well-planned cycle of political acts. In Memphis he was named Pharoah, in the Nile delta he built a city to bind East and West and at the oracle of Ammon he was named son of Zeus.
Alexander’s two battles with the Great King
In November 333 BC on the banks of the river Pinaros, which empties into the Gulf of Alexandretta, the rivals deployed their armies: the Great King to the north, Alexander to the south. While the former remained stationary, the young king was continually altering his position, until he judged it the right moment to attack. Alexander himself galloped headlong towards the Great King’s chariot and he, taken completely by surprise, turned and fled.
Two years later, in October 331 BC, the battle of Gaugamela took place, near the old Assyrian capital of Nineveh. Alexander knew full well the significance of this battle and the numerical superiority of the enemy. His decisive tactics were to mislead the enemy, take them by surprise and attack without hesitation. This time Darius abandoned the fight even before the outcome had been decided. From now on Alexander would be called king of Asia.
Alexander in Babylon
After his victory at Gaugamela, Alexander turned towards Babylon, metropolis of the East. The local satrap opened the gates of its magnificent walls and welcomed the new Great King. The roads had been decorated with flowers, incense was being burnt on the altars and Alexander was flanked by Babylonian wise men as he progressed into the miraculous city along the processional route with its lions carved in bas-relief. He stopped at Nebuchadnezzar’s palace and then made his way to the sanctuary of the God Belos, where he made a sacrifice. His first royal decree was that the sacred buildings that had been destroyed a hundred and fifty years earlier by Xerxes be rebuilt, thus symbolically putting an end to the Persian occupation. In the old Babylonian palace he was to spend the last days of his life in the summer of 323 BC.
Alexander at Susa and Persopolis
At Susa, the administrative capital of the Persian state, Alexander took possession of a large part of the royal treasure. There he found the bronze statues of Armodios and Aristogeiton, symbols of Athenian democracy which had been seized by Xerxes.
At the end of 331 BC he fought fierce battles to pass the narrow mountain pass of the so-called Persian Gates and arrived, without further difficulty, at Persepolis, the official capital with the splendid palaces of Darius and Xerxes, who had planned and attempted the subjugation of Greece. When these palaces were engulfed in flames the punishment for the destruction of the Acropolis was symbolically accomplished. What is more, the Macedonian king’s mission, entrusted to him by the Council of the Greek league at Corinth, had now been carried out.
Alexander in India
In the spring of 326 BC Alexander crossed the inhospitable mountain range of the Hindukush, (Paropamisos or Indian Caucasus to the Greeks) and headed south to where the plain of the river Indus opens out. Today this region belongs to Pakistan. At its northernmost edge, where the valley of the Chitral forms a wedge, the ancient city of Nysa was built on a hill. According to local tradition it had been built by Dionysos who, in mythological times, had mounted a great campaign and subjugated the Indians. Ivy, the beloved plant of Dionysos, grew wild there. When they saw it, the Greeks were enthusiastic. They made wreaths and held celebrations with sacrifices to the God. Today, on the rugged slopes of the Hindukush live the Kalash, people much paler than the Indians and with their own, entirely different, way of life. Their neighbours call them mountain magicians and they themselves insist that they are the descendants of Alexander the Great’s soldiers.
The entry into India was triumphant and the local king, Taxiles, welcomed Alexander with friendship. The Macedonian king sacrificed to the Gods at the capital, Taxila, organized games and set up a garrison. Taxila (Bhir Mound) has been uncovered during excavations near Islamabad with ruins dating back to the 6th century BC. In the city as well as in the Buddhist monasteries and temples the influence of Greek architecture is evident: small temples, pediments, columns, Corinthian square pillars, epistyles and cornices are certainly borrowings from the Greek architecture. The human figure of Buddha, which later spread as far as China and Japan, was created for the first time in the spirit of Greek sculpture. The statues of the God are clothed in the many-pleated Greek himation and represent the great ascetic with a sweet and gentle expression.
This Indo-Greek style was named the Art of Gandhara after an age-old kingdom. The inhabitants of the region, conquered in 518 BC by Darius I, the king who marched against the Greeks, later remembered Alexander with gratitude as providing the opportunity for linking Buddhism with Greek civilization.
Alexander in Baktria
Baktria was the vast satrapy of the Persians between the river Oxus (Amu Darya) and the Hindukush. However, the country made its first appearance on the stage of history with Alexander’s campaign. From the Bronze Age, the waters of the great river had been making the region fertile through a system of irrigation channels. The Greeks introduced organization into the cities and the urban way of life. During Hellenistic times Baktria was called the country of the thousand cities and in the middle of the 3rd century BC a Helleno-Baktrian kingdom was founded which lasted until 130 BC, when tribes of northern nomads crossed the borders and conquered it. Recent excavations have brought to light a splendid Hellenistic city built on the river, most probably Oxian Alexandria. The city was well fortified and had a large palace and treasury, a gymnasium, a theatre, temples and a monument to fallen heroes. In the entrance hall, (Pronaos) of this last edifice was found an inscription of one of the sayings of the Greek philosophers which was written in the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi:
As a child be respectful
As an adolescent be self-controlled
In maturity be just
As an old man be compliant
Dying, do not feel sorry
The original text had been copied for the city by the peripatetic philosopher, Klearchos, who had brought it to Baktria in order to strengthen “Greek education and the Greek way of life”, in this remote corner of the Ancient World.
Helleno-Baktrian and Indo-Hellenic coins
The chance discovery of 500,000 ancient coins in Afghanistan in 1992 brought the history of this reign during the time of the diadochi of Alexander the Great back into the news. Part of the coins come from Baktria and another part from the area of ancient India immediately south of the Hindukush mountains. A total of forty kings and two queens are portrayed on the coin obverses. Most of them are only known from their coins.
In the middle of the 3rd century BC, Baktria and India, far from the great Seleukid centers, were isolated when the Parthian kingdom was thrust between them and the Seleukid kingdom. In 250 BC Diodotos was proclaimed king of Baktria. In 230 BC he was overthrown and succeeded by Euthydemos, who is shown on the obverse of his coins, with Herakles on the reverse. The next king was Demetrios, characterized by the historian Polybios as the great conqueror of India after Alexander. For this reason he, too, is shown on his coins wearing the scalp of an Indian elephant. Kings Agathokles (185-175 BC) and Pantaleon (185-180 BC) were the first to strike square drachmas of the Indian type with bilingual inscriptions in Greek and Kharosthi (an Indian dialect). On these coins Hindu deities are depicted for the first time.
Eukratides (171-145 BC) was one of the most powerful kings of Baktria. The Dioskouroi on horseback of his coins recall the successes of his cavalry in fighting the nomads from the north. On some of the coins Eukratides is named “Great King”.
Heliokles (145-130 BC) was the last Greek king of Baktria. South of the Hindukush, however, Greek kings survived for over a century more. Greatest of the Greek kings of India was Menander (155-130 BC) who in Indian sources is known as Milinda. His famous questions to Nagasena are set down in the sacred books, starting with Plato’s utopian Republic and Buddhist teachings. This was the first time that Greek philosophy had been so directly and deeply linked to the preachings of Buddhism. His coins, struck to the Indian standard weight system, show the Alkidemos of Athena of Pella on the reverse to underline the king’s origins in distant Macedonia.
The last Indo-Hellenic coins belong to Straton III (25 BC – 10 AD). Much earlier than this, however, the Scythians who had settled in the area, struck their own coins with Greek inscriptions and types. This tradition continued until the time of Kanishka (232-260 AD), the greatest king of Kushan, when the Greek language was abandoned, although the Greek alphabet was retained.
Illustrated manuscripts
Alexander’s achievements did not delight only Antiquity, but also the Middle Ages in east and west. Artists in every age and location continued to represent the life of Alexander, each in his own way. From the rich fund of miniatures, those of Code 5 of the Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and post-Byzantine studies in Venice stand out. The manuscript contains 250 miniatures decorated with gold, accompanied by a short explanatory text written in red ink.
The text is based on an ancient romance about Alexander by Pseudokallisthenes. Here myth and reality intermingle to increase the magic of the narrative. Alexander’s divine “origin” is given practical explanation that his real father was the last Pharoah of Egypt to embody the god, Ammon. Alexander takes part in the Olympic Games and in horse races in Rome. He does not use only his bravery to defeat the Persians but many incredible artifices. He tames creatures with six hands and six feet, conquers wild, hairy women, corresponds with the Amazons and earns the love of Queen Kondake. Finally, having conquered the wild kings of the north, he returns to Babylon and dies wretchedly after drinking poisoned wine.
This manuscript was commissioned by “the faithful king in Christ the Lord of all the East and Perateia”, pictured on the title page, most probably Alexios III Comnenos, emperor of Trebizond (1348-1390 AD), admirer and imitator of Alexander. Later the manuscript passed into Turkish hands and for this reason the captions have been paraphrased in Turkish and added in black ink in the margins.
The same ancient tale by Pseudokallisthenes formed the basis for the narrative version of the life of Alexander in Persian (6th century AD). This in turn produced a Syrian edition, followed by an Arabian and finally, in the 15th century, an Ethiopian one. Around 1000 AD Firdusi wrote his great Persian epic which includes the story of Alexander with an abundance of new material that has no relation to the ancient work. Two centuries later the Persian poet, Nezami, reworked Firdusi’s poem in his Genealogy (Khamse), resorting to the original Persian text but also to the Greek and the Arabic. Alexander now appears as a glorious military leader and as a wise king. He it was who freed Egypt, who defeated Darius, who conquered Arabia, who went to Mecca. But it was also he who answered the questions of the seven wise men about the cosmos, heaven, earth, water and their creator.