Edwyn Robert Bevan

“ The mass of material used is colossal, as in all the Pharaonic buildings; its transport and construction must have presented graver difficulties than the piling up of the stones which form the great pyramids. ”

“ It might be naïve to posit such a motive in the case of a modern practical man, but it is thoroughly in accordance with the temperament of Alexander. There is certainly a problem here; but the problem is not why Alexander in particular wanted to consult the ram-headed god, but why this shrine, so far out of the world and so difficult of access, had ever become a place to which Greeks resorted.
It is plain that the prestige of Ammon in the Greek world had to do with the growth of the Greek colony, Cyrene, on the African coast. ”

“ Even during Alexander's time, the effective control of the country seems to have been soon gathered into his hands by one man, the Greek, Cleomenes of Naucratis, who had become a citizen of the new Alexandria, and the system as devised by Alexander must have lost reality, if it was not definitely abandoned. When a new system was contrived by Alexander's successors of the house of Ptolemy, it was on other lines. ”

“ There is no reason to doubt that Alexander was really hailed by the priest of Ammon as a son of the Supreme God. It is now, however, generally recognized that this was common form in the case of a king of Egypt. [21] All the Pharaohs since the second millennium had been officially sons of Amen‐Ra. According to established formulas, Amen gave to his royal sons "the heads of all living," "all countries, all peoples," "all the lands as far as the circuit of the sun." ”

“ There was no reason why Alexander should be interested especially in the Jews. The Jews were not in those days what they afterwards became — a people connected to a pre-eminent degree with trade and finance. "We are not a commercial people," Josephus could still write in the 1st century A.D. (c. Apion, I § 60) .
The other event, beside the foundation of Alexandria, which stands out in connexion with Alexander's winter residence in Egypt, is his visit to the Temple of Ammon — as the Greeks called Amen — in the Oasis now called Siwah. ”

“ In the spring of 331 — it cannot have been more than a month or two at most after Alexander's return from Siwah — he left Egypt to attack the Persian king in Mesopotamia. His corpse was destined to return one day to Egypt, but he himself never. He had probably not seen much of the Nile Valley above Memphis, though the Macedonian effective occupation extended at any rate as far as the first cataract, since we hear of Alexander sending Apollonides of Chios (a Greek who had joined the Persians and had been captured by Alexander's forces) to be interned at Elephantine. ”

“ We may draw to any extent on our imagination, but we shall never know.
The thing of most enduring importance which Alexander did in Egypt was the founding of Alexandria. In the summer of 332 Alexander had taken and destroyed the great commercial port of the Eastern Mediterranean, Tyre. He may have desired to create a new port in Egypt — a "Macedonian Tyre" — which would take the place Tyre had taken. [3] He chose a site some forty miles from the old Greek city of Egypt, Naucratis, communicating with the interior by the Canopic branch of the Nile. ”

“ From Siwah, Alexander and his company returned to Egypt, according to Ptolemy, by the direct way across the Nitrian desert to Memphis. Aristobulus said he returned as he came by Paraetonium, but Ptolemy is here the better authority. At Memphis, Alexander was busy receiving embassies from the Greek states and reinforcements from Macedonia. The children of the land saw once more the culture of their new masters displayed in a great musical and gymnastic festival, and a sacrifice was offered to Zeus the King, no doubt in Hellenic fashion. ”

“ Greek soldiers were not an altogether unfamiliar sight to Egyptians. In the days of Herodotus, a century before, Egyptians had looked upon Greeks as unclean foreigners, but in the interval there had come the national struggles against the Persian, in which native kings had had the help of forces sent by Greek states ”

“ As to what happened when Alexander came to the shrine of Ammon, the account given by Callisthenes was as follows:
"The king alone was suffered by the priest to enter the temple in his ordinary dress; his retinue were compelled to change their clothes. All except Alexander stood outside to listen to the delivery of the oracle, Alexander alone inside. Oracles are here not given, as at Delphi and Branchidae, in words, but for the most part by gestures and symbols . . . ”

“ His statement about the enthronement at Memphis is likely to be an invention with a similar purpose.
But there is good authority for saying that Alexander did show conspicuous honour to the gods of the land. His conduct was a contrast to that of the Persian conquerors, who had outraged national feeling by killing the sacred Apis bull. Alexander on his arrival at Memphis offered sacrifice to the sacred bull and the other national deities. The religion of the Persians, like that of the Hebrews, made them regard the idolatrous worships of other peoples with contempt ”

“ Rationalization of the stories is really easy enough. Rain still occurs, as a rare phenomenon, in this region. Crows and snakes might not impossibly be met with in the desert; a company marching through the solitude startles any animals which may be about, and these naturally flee in front of the advancing column. [15]
A more or less true picture of the Oasis of the Oracle of Ammon, as it was in those days, may be made out by combining what we are told by ancient writers (the fullest account is to be found in Diodorus, XVII.50) with the data furnished by Siwah to‐day. ”

“ Alexander offered sacrifice to the Egyptian gods, but he did not forget that he was a champion of Hellenic culture. At Memphis he also held a gymnastic and musical festival in the Greek manner. Some of the most renowned musicians and actors of the Greek world took part in the competitions. How did they happen to be on the spot, miles up the Nile, just at the right moment? ”

“ How far Cleomenes really deserved his evil reputation, it is not possible now to say. It is always easy by a slight twist of the facts to represent any drastic fiscal administration as unjust and oppressive, and it was the interest obviously of the house of Ptolemy later on to have the memory of Cleomenes blackened. Alexander, we know, would not remove him. Arrian quotes from a supposed letter of Alexander to Cleomenes, in which he says: "If I find the temples in Egypt and the heroon of Hephaestion well appointed, I shall condone your former transgressions ”

“ Again, as he was going by water through the nome where the crocodile is a god, one of his slaves was carried off by a crocodile; so, calling the priests together, he said he must have revenge for this wanton attack, and ordered a crocodile hunt to be set on foot. ”

“ For whilst Cyrene maintained constant commercial relations with the other Greek states of the Mediterranean, from Cyrene coasting vessels easily would reach Paraetonium about 345 miles eastwards, and from Paraetonium a comparatively easy caravan-road goes from the coast inland over the desert to Siwah, a journey of some seven days by camel. ”