Ancient Egyptians

Alexander
 

The Great Mystery

Written by T. Peter Limber

Alexander's Macedonian veterans—the hard men he had led to victory after victory, the nucleus of his forces—could not believe that their beloved young leader was dying. They demanded, with an insistence that verged on mutiny, to see him themselves.

All day long, grief-stricken soldiers shuffled past in an endless line as Alexander, barely alive, lay on his cot in Nebuchadrezzar's already-ancient palace in Babylon. A slight nod of his head, a movement of his hand or eyes, was all he could manage to acknowledge them, but "he greeted them all," wrote a chronicler.

For 12 years Alexander had personally led his men from rugged highland Macedonia, in the north of the Greek peninsula, first destroying rebellious Thebes, then crossing the Hellespont—today's Dardanelles—to begin his revenge on Persia. His troops fought their way across Anatolia, subjugating the great Persian Empire, defeating even the Bactrian armored cavalry, and winning onward, undefeated, as far as the Beas River in India. Alexander had been wounded many times, but nothing, it seemed, could overcome his boundless energy, his iron constitution, and his capacity for quick recovery. Yet now came this fever, which modern doctors believe was typhoid, "complicated by bowel perforation and ascending paralysis." His own doctors had tried every remedy they knew, but without success. During the last 10 days Alexander had grown steadily weaker.

Finally he assembled his closest companions, his eight chief officers, to hear his answer to the inevitable question: To whom would he leave what was now a Macedonian empire? His answer is still debated. Arrian quotes it as "Hoti to kratisto" —which can mean "to the strongest," "to the best" or "to the most able." If Alexander meant "to the strongest of my generals," he was almost predicting the succession wars that followed. Yet he had already handed his royal ring to Perdiccas, his second-in-command, thus appointing him regent—and certainly Alexander's Bactrian wife, Roxane, was pregnant at the time.

A final ambiguity is that, instead of "Hoti to kratisto," the dying man—he was probably also suffering from pneumonia by them—may well have simply gasped the name "Cratero," referring to his most trusted general, Craterus, whom he had already appointed regent of Macedonia.

Alexander died at sunset on June 10, in the year we today know as 323 BC. He was 32 years old.

Alexander's eight senior generals agreed to divide his empire among them, each to govern his respective territory as a vassal of the ruling house of Macedonia. As to who would be king of Macedonia, and Alexander's heir, they also agreed that it could only be a blood relative of the conqueror's—which meant, regrettably, either Alexander's mentally handicapped half-brother, Philip Arrhidaeus, or Roxane's half-Macedonian child, if it should be male. (It was.) Perdiccas's regency did not much please those strong-minded leaders, but no other solution was even tolerable to them.

Aristander, Alexander's chief soothsayer, had said that the country in which Alexander was buried would have good fortune, a prediction that increased the rivalry developing among the generals. Alexander himself had made known his wish to be buried at the well-known temple of the supreme Egyptian god Ammon Ra in the remote oasis of Siwa, in the Egyptian-Libyan desert. Alexander had made a crucial visit to this oracular shrine in 331, when he had taken Egypt from the Persians. The temple priests, who said they had foreseen his arrival, had welcomed him as the son of Ammon—a designation that certified his divinity—and, apparently more important, they had given him the answer "that his soul desired" to a personal question, its content never divulged, that he had put to them when he spoke to them alone.

Mindful of Aristander's prediction, Perdiccas, whose long record of loyal service ran back to the days of Alexander's father, Philip II, defied Alexander's wish. Instead of Siwa, he ordered the body transported to Macedonia for burial at Aegae, in the company of Alexander's royal ancestors. While thus seeming to honor his dead king and his country, Perdiccas's true objective may well have been to settle this politically unstable moment by sending into Macedonia an army which he controlled, under the guise of an escort of honor. He knew that several Greek leaders and generals who opposed the authority conferred upon him had been meeting there.

None of this happened quickly, of course. The preparations for Alexander's entombment had to be appropriate not only for an incomparable military leader and emperor, but in fact for a "god." A funeral pyre in the old style was not for Alexander, whose body was, to his followers, both a sacred relic and a political token of the greatest importance. It was to be preserved. Diodorus Siculus, a Roman historian who wrote during the first century BC, gives the most detailed description. 

First, Egyptian and Chaldean embalmers worked their skills "to make the body sweet-smelling and incorruptible." Then, further following Egyptian custom, the body, clothed and in armor, was sealed in beautifully formed, close-fitting, heavy sheets of beaten gold, which were shaped so that even the features of Alexander's face were recognizable. None of the ancient historians mentions the use of a stone sarcophagus, though the body had to be safely transported over more than 3000 kilometers (nearly 2000 mi) of rough terrain.

The funeral cart, or catafalque, that was to bear Alexander's body was beautifully designed, sculptured and decorated, a gold- and jewel-covered extravagance that surpassed anything known in history or legend. It took two years and many skilled craftsmen to prepare it, with cost no object. Sparkling brilliantly in the sunlight, the heavy, roofed funeral carriage was pulled by teams of 64 matched mules. An army of honor guards accompanied it, under the command of a distinguished Macedonian nobleman, one of Alexander's staff officers.

Departing from Babylon, the funeral cortege traveled north a short distance along the Euphrates River, then east toward the ancient Persian city of Opis, then northwest along the banks of the Tigris. Ahead of the procession, road-builders smoothed the way, and thousands of people traveled to gather all along the route to see the magnificent spectacle pass. The cortege proceeded slowly, probably no more than 15 kilometers (9 mi) a day. Its route then skirted the northern edge of the Syrian desert, and headed toward the coast at Alexandria ad Issum (now Iskenderun, Turkey), a city founded by Alexander in 333 to consolidate his victory over the Persians at nearby Issus.

At this point, the procession reached a crossroads of sorts. If it were to proceed to Macedonia, it would have to continue west along Turkey's southern coast, either overland or by ship. If Siwa were the destination, then it would either sail southwest across the Mediterranean to Paraetonium (now Marsa Matruh) on the Egyptian coast, or travel by land down the Palestinian coast to Gaza and then turn west. Travel by sea was easier, but if the intent were to allow the largest possible number of people to see the funeral procession pass, then a land route would be preferable.

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