In our previous episode on Alexander the Great and his conquests, we detailed the
Macedonian king’s dramatic siege of the defiant Phoenician city of Tyre in 332.
Through bravery, doggedness and a generous quantity of engineering genius, the invaders
broke the walls and took the island, joining it with the mainland forever in the process. Rather
than push inland in pursuit of the Great King of Persia, Alexander would instead march south to the
most ancient kingdom in the Hellenic imagination - Egypt. There, the Macedonian king would both begin
work on one of the most enduring marvels of his life and endure events that were to change his
perspective on life forever. Welcome to our sixth video covering the Macedonian Invasion of Persia,
the conquest of Egypt, and how Alexander visited the famous desert oracle at Siwah.
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Following the capture and destruction of Tyre in July of 332 BC, Alexander the Great had once
more rejected generous peace overtures from Darius III, famously quipping ‘That is what I
should do were I Parmenion’, hitting out at the underwhelming ambition of his right-hand man.
The king didn’t just want accommodation or riches now, he wanted the entirety of
the Persian Empire and perhaps beyond. The next objective was to the south - Egypt.
As the Macedonian army, victorious in five major clashes since crossing into Asia, pushed into
Palestine, it received the immediate surrender of every single city in the region except one.
That single defiant was Gaza - a formidable hilltop stronghold controlling the approaches
to Egypt. Like Tyre, it too would have to be taken. Unfortunately for Alexander,
Gaza’s Persian governor Batis had been proactive during the siege on Tyre, taking the measure of
hiring Arab mercenaries and stocking up his city with plentiful stores to withstand a siege of
his own domain. The 160 mile march south through Phoenicia and Palestine was a harsh one, despite
the lack of conflict. Refreshment was hard to come by and the climate - during the near-eastern
summer, was incredibly arid. The army’s salvation was the fleet element commanded by Alexander’s
closest companion Hephaestion, which kept the advancing soldiers supplied with food and water.
Ákē - known during the Crusades as Acre, was passed first, followed by Joppa and Ascalon.
The simple progress finally came to a swift halt when Gaza loomed large on the horizon
in September of 332 BC. Alexander’s army took up position opposite a section of the fortification
on the southern side of the city - which the Macedonians considered weakest. Aiming to
take advantage of subterfuge, the king ordered his engineers to begin mining beneath the Gazan walls,
but to begin their work from far out of sight. At the same time, siege towers were
ordered forward to distract Batis’ garrison from the true threat beneath the soft earth.
Due to the sandy and easily excavated ground surrounding Gaza,
sapping operations progressed rapidly. However, the siege towers had massive trouble rolling along
such uneven, hilly terrain due to the sand, which would frequently trap the wheels and cause delays.
Constant jarring of this kind eventually caused the flooring within the towers to break apart,
injuring soldiers and making further approach impossible. Reluctantly, as the sun was already
close to setting, Alexander decreed that the army halt their assault for the evening.
After an uneventful night, before operations commenced the king made a traditional sacrifice
asking for the gods’ aid. While the ritual was ongoing, it is said that a crow flew overhead
and dropped a lump of dry mud on Alexander’s head before taking a perch on the nearest siege tower
and this was viewed as a grim omen by the soldiery and their monarch. Alexander consulted his
personal soothsayer Aristander, who interpreted the event to foretell the fall of the city,
but also harm that would come to Alexander during the clash. He recommended that the army
take no action that day, and as a sign of just how superstitious Alexander was, the king acquiesced.
Deciding that the passivity of their foes to be a sign of weakness, Batis’ mercenary Arab troops
launched a brazen sortie out of the city gates in an attempt to destroy Alexander’s siege towers
and kill as many Macedonians as they could. Having taken the first of the enemy soldiers by surprise,
Batis’ Arabs initially met with some success and reached the towers with relatively little
struggle. However, when Alexander caught onto what exactly was happening, he led his companions and
hypaspists into battle from the front line, crashing into the spot where the fighting was
fiercest. This decisive intervention stabilised the engagement and tipped the momentum toward
the Macedonians, but the king was not going to escape unscathed, as the soothsayer had predicted.
Quintus Curtius Rufus tells us how one of Batis’ hired swords pretended to be a deserter
and threw himself before the king, asking for pardon. Alexander, always magnanimous,
told the man to rise and be received. Thus able to get close, the Arab suddenly retrieved
his sword and lunged at the king’s neck. With athletic prowess Alexander shifted to the side,
avoiding the lethal blow only to be wounded by an arrow in the shoulder almost immediately.
The Macedonians shoved the Gazan defenders back inside the city. However, they retreated in high
spirits, their morale buoyed by the Macedonian commander’s apparent severe injury or death on
the battlefield. Somewhat less to their liking Alexander too was, despite his terrible wound,
incredibly happy. Aristander had been correct. Harm had come to him, of course,
but now the other prediction - that Gaza would soon fall, would surely come to pass.
While the king recovered from yet another near miss that might’ve ended his life,
he commanded his army to begin yet another monumental feat of engineering.
In an arc around Alexander’s siege lines, the earth was piled up and up over the course of
several weeks until it created a mound that was as high as the escarpment on which the city sat.
Onto that encircling, artificial hillock was placed the heaviest Macedonian artillery,
that could now unleash devastating missiles from its new, higher position. It was now October. Two
months after the king’s initial investment of the city, he launched a withering bombardment
from the mound which cracked open a portion of the city walls and allowed his elites to breach them.
Despite fearsome resistance, Alexander’s army was not to be denied its prize. Gaza was taken,
looted and its male population wiped out, while the women and children were sold as slaves.
Alexander finally crossed into Egypt now that the way was clear,
reaching the gateway to the Nile - Pelusium, in just a week.
When he and his army arrived, they were met not by a dogged garrison of defenders,
but by a cheering crowd of overjoyed people who regarded the invading Macedonians as liberators.
As the Romans would in a later age, the Persians had treated Egypt as an exploitable breadbasket
for centuries, ruthlessly crushing unrest and suppressing the native religion. The Egyptians,
in turn, reviled the Persians. The Achaemenid governor Mazaces realised his unstable position
and received Alexander with friendship, granting the king open access to Egypt and its treasuries.
From Pelusium Alexander sailed up the Nile to Memphis - the ancient capital of the Nile Kingdom
in the days of its strength. In contrast to the first Achaemenid conqueror of Egypt - Cambyses,
who is said to have profaned the divine Apis, Alexander showed himself as a friend
by offering the god special sacrifice. Then, on November 14th 332, the priesthood at Memphis
placed the double crown of upper and lower Egypt - symbol of the Pharaohs, onto Alexander’s head,
and gave him the traditional scepter and flail. The ruler of Macedon was now also Pharaoh of
Egypt - god and king all at once, son of Ra and Osiris, Horus the Golden One, beloved of Amen.
For a man who had always been curious about his potentially divine origins, given the
words of his mother Olympias, the impact of this latest enthronement can hardly be understated.
The new Pharaoh departed Memphis in January of 331, sailing toward the Mediterranean until
he reached Lake Mareotis. There, inspired by the quality of the site opposite the island of Pharos,
Alexander ordered that planning and construction efforts on a new city
begin immediately. So enthusiastic was Alexander about this new project that he supposedly
designated the layout of the town and the limit of its defenses himself. That city would,
over the next few decades, become Alexandria - the cosmopolitan capital of the ancient world.
While his architects and labourers continued preparatory work on the new Greece-facing city,
Alexander found himself consumed by a sudden desire to visit a famous oracle of the god
Zeus-Ammon. This religious figure had previously been consulted by king Croesus of Lydia,
Athens during the Peloponnesian War, and many other historical giants. It was seen with equal
reverence to the oracle at Delphi. The problem was that this oracle resided within a desert
oasis known as Siwah - fully three-hundred miles distant to the west. Alexander no doubt wished
to discover more about his divine parentage and the Siwah oracle was the perfect place to receive
this godly information, given that the Egyptian ‘Amen’ and Greek Zeus were generally viewed as
different interpretations of the same god. It was said that during a war among the gods long ago,
the Hellenic pantheon transformed into animals and fled to Egypt. Aphrodite, for example,
was said to be Isis under another name. Other less esoteric motivations were also present.
A crucial stage of the campaign against Persia was upcoming and divine backing would be a great boon.
Setting out in late January with only a small band, among whom was the future Egyptian ruler
Ptolemy, Alexander travelled 170 miles west along the coastal road and eventually reached
the small settlement of Paraetonium on the borders of Cyrenaica. There, the adventuring king received
a delegation of emissaries from Cyrene. They granted him a number of grandiose gifts including
fine horses and chariots, and he concluded a treaty of peace and alliance with them.
The party then continued on their way, turning inland from the Mediterranean. What followed
was a gruelling slog through the parched, desolate and utterly inhospitable Libyan Desert.
The band’s water supplies ran out four days into the venture, but they were saved by a
great rainstorm that came just at the right time. Not content with just dehydrating the Macedonians,
the desert then saw fit to disorient them as well. Khamsin desert winds picked up, blasting away all
landmarks in a withering sandstorm that made Alexander’s guides lose their bearings.
Finally, almost a month after setting out from Lake Mareotis, the party managed to
follow a flight of birds to the verdant Siwah oasis, which they reached in late February 331.
While the group remained behind and enjoyed the relative luxury of the oasis,
Alexander went directly to the temple. The head priest, waiting for him, addressed the king as
‘Son of Amen, good god, lord of the two lands’ and then ushered him inside. As Arrian puts it,
Alexander then ‘put his question to the oracle and received the answer which his heart desired’.
Since not a single person except Alexander was permitted entry, nobody truly knows what the
king heard in that temple, but whatever it was left an irrevocable and permanent impact on him.
Plutarch, writing almost half a millennia later, tells us that Alexander, upon gaining entry,
asked the oracle whether or not the murderers of his father had been punished for their crime.
To this, the oracle responded that the king ought to guard his tongue, since his father
was indeed immortal and therefore could not die. The implication is quite clear - Alexander the
Great was the son of Zeus-Amen and therefore a divine being in his own right. There are several
other tales in the ancient sources concerning this consultation, but they are likely also
speculation. Sometime after entering, Alexander exited the temple and was met by his companions,
to whom he would tell none of the details about what had been revealed to him. After rewarding
the Siwah shrine with plentiful gifts of gold, the party returned to the embryonic city of Alexandria
by the route they had come. The first indications of spring were now upon the Macedonians. After the
relatively simple foray into Egypt, it was nearly time to resume the campaign against Darius III.
Before the titans locked horns again however, there were important administrative matters to
conclude. Leaving the great work at Alexandria in the capable hands of his builders,
engineers and architects, Alexander sailed south to Memphis, where he was once again infatuated by
the ancient city’s air of quasi-divine Pharaonic majesty. The monarch was fawned on by his Egyptian
subjects as though he was a deity on earth and artists began depicting their new beloved ruler
on temple walls across the country. Peter Green implies that Greek emissaries actually began to
understand Alexander’s change in personality and a newfound love for ‘oriental’ divinity,
realising that it could be exploited for their own ends. Several embassies of Greeks were waiting
for the king at Memphis with petitions, all of which Arrian tells us were generously granted.
It is tempting to say that their flattery might’ve swayed the king, but it is equally possible that a
mix of success and elation at the Siwah revelation had Alexander in a good mood. Beyond mere emotion,
Alexander also had a more pragmatic motivation to begin treating the Greeks more gently
at the beginning of 331. As feared, Persian assistance had allowed Sparta’s King Agis III
to start making trouble at home. Throughout Alexander’s time in Egypt, Agis had managed
to take over most of Crete and stood poised to attack the mainland with a large mercenary force.
The situation was a volatile tinderbox just waiting to be lit, and being unduly
harsh to other Greek states seemed likely to make the situation explode more violently.
Alexander paid special attention to the governance of Egypt, which he immediately viewed as both a
plentiful cornucopia and a potential threat. It had presented two primary threats to
occupying empires in the past - ‘nationalist’ rebellions by disaffected natives and attempts
by devious governors to leverage Egypt’s supreme strength in revolt against the larger empire.
The king now set out a number of reforms aiming at avoiding both of these nightmare scenarios. He
separated the Nile kingdom’s administration into civil and military branches. Routine day-to-day
bureaucracy remained in the hands of local Egyptians, a move which gained Alexander the
favour of the locals. Not only that, but if those same bureaucrats began making a mess of things,
the population wouldn’t blame him. The traditional geographical division of upper and lower Egypt was
also employed, with a district governor known as a ‘nomarch’ serving as steward over each segment.
Geographical divide and rule tactics of this kind were also used on the military front, although
Greeks were employed rather than Egyptians. The country’s eastern and western districts
would be commanded by Cleomenes of Naucratis and Apollonius, son of Charinus respectively.
Macedonian garrison commanders were also instituted at Memphis and Pelusium in order
to keep order in the delicate, fertile and often revolt-prone breadbasket that
was Egypt. With matters of governance finalised, Alexander took his whole army back north to Tyre.
In the Achaemenid heartland, Darius had been using the time since his defeat at Issus
to gather a fresh, even more, numerous force to throw Alexander back. This army was made up of a
multitude of peoples from every realm of Asia still under Persian control, including India,
Scythia and Bactria. Predominant among the Persian aristocracy was Bessus - governor of Bactria,
who not only brought to bear a powerful force, but also possessed kingly ambitions.
The stage was set and the curtain was about to rise on the final great battle between
Macedon and Persia - the Battle of Gaugamela, and our video on that battle is on the way,
so make sure you are subscribed and have pressed the bell button to see it.
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