Alexander and Egypt

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Theseus
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Alexander and Egypt

Post by Theseus »

As some of you may know two of my favorite things to talk about are ancient Egypt and Alexander the Great. I first became interested in Egypt as a child and have researched ancient Egypt extensively. I guess it is not a surprise that when I came across Alexander in Egyptian history it stirred my curisosity that this Greek king could win the Egyptian's hearts over.
From what I have read the Egyptians were happy to have Alexander as their ruler because the Persians didn't treat them well and Alexander allowed the Egyptians to worship their Gods freely. He linked Amun to his own God, Zeus.I feel he also treated people from other cultures with respect and saw them as equals to his own countrymen. As we know this wasn't taken well by all of his men.
I found a picture of Alexander's cartouche in Luxor Egypt
Image

Most of us know the story of how Alexander went to great lengths to visit the temple in Siwa oasis of the God Amun. Alexander held their beliefs so high as so to ask if Hephaestion could be worshiped as a God after his death. I think there was a mutual respect between the Egyptians and Alexander.

Egypt recognized Alexander IV as their Pharaoh after his father's death and there are pictures and cartouche's of him as well. Alexander has left his mark on so many countries histories and it is an amazing accomplishment.
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Post by Theseus »

I found Alexander's Egyptian throne name: Setp n Ra Mery Amun
Ra is an Egyptian God as is Amun
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Post by Vergina Sun »

Alexander was very wise and understanding to not only allow the Egyptians to worship their own gods, but worship them himself. Many people often underestimate the power of religion in bringing people together, especially when conquering. Many other men, might have tried to bring their own religions and force them on the Egyptians. The needs of the people should be important to any diplomat who wants to gain the favor of a country, and religion was a key piece to Egyptian lifestyle. Alexander was respected in Egypt because he allowed himself to accept different cultures and find ways to bring them together. I guess underneath it all, we aren't that different. :)
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Post by Theseus »

Very true words Vergina. I feel Alexander was very passionate about religion and appreciated that about the Egyptians. He linked their God Amun with Zeus and had no problems worshiping their Gods for I think he believed them to be the same just with different names.???? We will never know for sure, but that's my opinion.

As you say some people would not have allowed the countries they conquered to continue worshipping their God or Gods . It amazes me how many religions there are in the world today. I can't stand when someone tries to push their beliefs on me (cough Tom Cruise cough) so I appreciate how Alexander handled religion. :D
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Post by ScottOden »

Theseus wrote:
He linked their God Amun with Zeus
It wasn't Alexander who linked Amun with Zeus, nor was the oracle of Ammon originally Egyptian. Ammon (perhaps a corruption of Baal Hammon) was a Libyan god of the Siwa oasis. The cult was "taken over" by the Egyptians in about the 9th or 8th century; the Egyptians likened this oracle god of the desert, whose symbol was said to have been a ram, to their own Amun.

In the 6th century, Ahmose II built the temple to Ammon that Alexander visited. According to Jona Lendering at Livius.org:
The sanctuary has been excavated and is remarkable because it does not look like an Egyptian temple at all. In fact, the cult seems to have remained Libyan in character, something that is more or less confirmed by the fact that the local ruler of the oasis is not depicted as Amasis' subject but as his equal. The cult of Ammon was only superficially egyptianized.
The Greeks of Cyrene in North Africa are the ones who first likened Ammon with Zeus. Livius.org also has an interesting story about the origin of the name "Zeus Ammon" -- ammos is supposedly the Greek word for sand, thus Zeus Ammos is Sandy Zeus . . . fitting for a desert oracle (and very cool if true). Through the efforts of the Cyreneans, and of the poet Pindar, the efficacy of the oracle of Zeus Ammon, and the god himself, spread across the Greek world (and didn't Alexander spare Pindar's house at Thebes?).

A smaller outpost of Zeus Ammon was in Macedon, at the town of Aphythis.

While Alexander showed remarkable tolerance and interest in the religious practices of those lands he conquered, the trip to Siwa was largely a pilgrimage to a shrine long held in reverence by the Greeks -- perhaps moreso than by the Egyptians.

Good topic, and great pics, Theseus!

Best,

Scott Oden
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Post by Theseus »

I'm not sure of the exact year the Egyptians started worshipping Amun but he was an Egyptian God at the time of Alexander's conquests.

I don't think I stated Alexander was the only one to link the two Gods together (if it seemed that way I apologize) I think it was a pesonal decission and not one that was forced upon anyone. Your post made me do some more searching for information on when Amun was first worshipped and I found some things that seem to match what you had posted:


Ammon was an oracle god, whose oracle was situated in the Siwa oasis, some 500 kilometers west of Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt. Originally, this was the place where the Libyan desert tribes worshiped a god who had the shape of a ram. He may have been related to Baal Hammon, a god venerated by the Semitic peoples (e.g., the Phoenicians and Carthaginians). However, this is just a hypothesis, and we can not be really certain about the origin of this cult - as is nearly always the case when we discuss an aspect of ancient religion.

The cult was taken over by the Egyptians, who identified the god with their supreme god Amun; they called god of the oracle 'Amun of Siwa, lord of good counsel .

Another center was the Macedonian town Aphythis, where the young Macedonian crown prince Alexander must have seen the statue. When he had become king, he visited Siwa (February 331). According to Arrian of Nicomedia, Alexander did this because he wanted to imitate his legendary ancestors Perseus and Heracles. This is an odd couple: Perseus never played a role in Alexander's propaganda. However, since the fifth century, Perseus was regarded as the ancestor of the Achaemenids, the Persian royal house; and everybody knew that the Macedonian kings descended from Heracles. Following in the footsteps of Heracles and Perseus was therefore, in a sense, a religious preliminary to the conquest of the Achaemenid empire.


It is possible that Alexander had already started to venerate Ammon, because during the sack of the Greek town of Thebes, he ordered that the house of Pindar had to be spared. On the other hand, there is no evidence that Alexander worshipped the ram-god before he visited Siwa.
However this may be, the result was important: Alexander was greeted as Ammon's son, and started to believe that he was a demi-god indeed. According to an admittedly hostile source, Ephippus of Olynthus, Alexander sometimes wore the horns of his divine father Ammon on public occasions. We can not establish the truth of this story, but it is certain that immediately after his death, he was depicted in this fashion.
www.livius.org/am-ao/ammon/ammon.htm

Until the Middle Kingdom his influence was local; but when the Theban kings had established their sovereignty over Egypt, Amen became nationally pre-eminent as Amen-Re, and by the 18th Dynasty was called the King of the Gods. His famous temple, Karnak, is the largest religious structure ever built by man.

Amen according to the older Theban traditions, was created by Thoth as one of the eight primordial deities of creation (Amen, Amaunet, Hah, Hauhet, Nun, Naunet, Kau, Kauket). Later traditions cast him in the role of self-created creator, who shaped the ordered world out of chaos through masturbation and self-fertilisation.
As creation god he assumed at times the name of Kematef (Greek Kneph) and was depicted as a snake.

As the Egyptian state god during the expansionist period of Egypt's history, Amen was the god to be thanked for the military successes. This was done both by endowing his temples with vast wealth as well as through the offering of severed hands and penes of fallen enemies [2]. Both penis and hand were symbols for Amen's powers. Amen's priestesses, the Wives of the God, were also called the Hands of the God. The obvious thought association arising from this epithet is not supported by any evidence. Very little is known about the Amen worship but what happened in public, such as the yearly transportation of Amen's statue from Karnak to Luxor, or the annual peregrination of the pharaoh and his wife to the Amen temple and their penetration into the inner sanctum. http://nefertiti.iwebland.com/religion/amen1.html
Last edited by Theseus on Sat Apr 05, 2008 5:32 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Theseus »

Another interesting fact Amun was later linked to Re/Ra and became Amun Ra so two more God's were merged.

The earliest dynasty I could find that worshipped Amun is the 11th dynasty.

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/amun-re.htm
Some assume that Amun (Amen, Amon) was a relatively modern god within the context of ancient Egyptian religion. His worship at Thebes, where the earliest known Temple dedicated to him was located, is only documented from the 11th Dynasty onward.
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Post by Vergina Sun »

ScottOden wrote:The Greeks of Cyrene in North Africa are the ones who first likened Ammon with Zeus. Livius.org also has an interesting story about the origin of the name "Zeus Ammon" -- ammos is supposedly the Greek word for sand, thus Zeus Ammos is Sandy Zeus . . . fitting for a desert oracle (and very cool if true). Through the efforts of the Cyreneans, and of the poet Pindar, the efficacy of the oracle of Zeus Ammon, and the god himself, spread across the Greek world (and didn't Alexander spare Pindar's house at Thebes?).

A smaller outpost of Zeus Ammon was in Macedon, at the town of Aphythis.

While Alexander showed remarkable tolerance and interest in the religious practices of those lands he conquered, the trip to Siwa was largely a pilgrimage to a shrine long held in reverence by the Greeks -- perhaps moreso than by the Egyptians.
It's interesting to see how the world was already fusing together with religion before anything else. If the Egyptians and Greeks could find religion in common with Zeus Ammon, it isn't too much of a surprise that Alexander the Great didn't find too much trouble in Egypt. Also, Alexander accepted their religion easily, giving an even closer relationship between him and the Egyptian people.
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Post by ScottOden »

Greek religion was far more fluid than Egyptian. While Amun was taken to be the Egyptian Zeus by the Greeks, the Egyptians did not turn around and claim Zeus as the Greek Amun. I think Ammon* was only taken into the Egyptian pantheon because it seems the Libyan pharaohs of the Third Intermediate Period (1070-747 BC) brought him along with them. Otherwise, while Egyptian priests would often acknowledge foreign gods, they rarely afforded them equal honors.

Theseus mentioned the conflation of Amun and Re, earlier. I found a small bit more on that whole idea of mish-mashing gods together from Egyptologist Emily Teeter (via the Seattle Art Museum's Egyptomania exhibit):

http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/exhibit ... rakhty.htm
Egyptian religion is a sophisticated and complicated form of polytheism, the belief in many gods. As the religion developed however, it became clear that there was a single unifying deity, and that all other deities are considered to be aspects of this unifying deity. Re is the earliest and most important unifying deity. As Egyptian religion evolves, all other deities are subsumed under Re, a process called syncretism. Another example of syncretism is the New Kingdom "king of gods," Amun-Ra.
I don't know if anything similar exists in Greek religion, though.

Best,

Scott (self-avowed Egypt geek)


*And please don't confuse Ammon with Amun. The two gods are NOT the same, even though the share a similar sounding name. AMUN/AMON/AMEN is a deity of long-standing in the Nile valley, as Theseus' posts have shown. AMMON is a relative newcomer to the Egyptian pantheon.
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Alexander in Egypt

Post by Katerina »

Theseus wrote:I found Alexander's Egyptian throne name: Setp n Ra Mery Amun
Ra is an Egyptian God as is Amun
Setp n Ra Mery Amun = Chosen of Ra Beloved of Amun

I have quite a few of Alexander's Egyptian pictures. I have posted one below, I hope it comes out.

( It isn't working... I'm not smart enough for this ! ) :shock:
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Post by rocktupac »

I happen to believe that Alexander cared little much for the Egyptian people or culture in general. Not that he despised them, or even looked down on them, but there is little mentioned in the sources which indicates that Alexander did much for their sake. After all, Egypt was now a part of his empire, and, therefore, its people were under his authority and care. I don't see how allowing them to continue practicing their own religion, which he allowed everyone else to do in his empire, demonstrates compassion or a sense of equality. I believe Arrian says that he first visited the Apis bull and payed homage to it, which won him great public favor, but this can very easily be seen as doing the opposite of what the Persians had done in the past. I forget who it was (Xerxes maybe?), but one of the Persian kings killed the Apis bull and this act of cruelty and sacrilege was never forgotten or forgiven by the Egyptians. So Alexander, wanting to win over the masses, would obviously pay his respects to this sacred figure and act different than their previous rulers.

Egypt was important in many ways: mainly for its grain, position in the Mediterranean, and for various military functions. As a great strategist and empire builder, Alexander clearly knew how valuable Egypt was and treated it leniently most probably for its grain and future prospects. But it also was in a key position. It offered a great place for a city and port, such as was built on the spot he called Alexandria. This allowed not only the export of grain to Greece, Macedonia and his other cities on the Mediterranean coast, but also for quick military access. Egypt was necessary also for protecting Alexander's rear as he moved finally deeper into Persia. It was only expected, from a purely military prospective, that Alexander should try and win over the hearts of the Egyptian people.

I think if we look at the texts with this in mind, and suspending any prior personal beliefs, it is easy to accept this, or at least find a slight bit of plausability to it. For the amount of time Alexander and his army spent there, there is little written about it in our sources. Surely Alexander must have seen the pyramids on his way to Memphis, so why isn't this described in Arrian or Curtius? It could be that, not really concerned that deeply about Egypt and its culture, that Alexander skipped seeing these ancient wonders and stuck to business: that of pretending to care about the Egyptians in order to easily and effortlessly control the much-lauded area.

Sorry if this offends anyone... I might just be playing Devil's advocate to some degree :twisted:
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Post by Semiramis »

Theseus wrote:From what I have read the Egyptians were happy to have Alexander as their ruler because the Persians didn't treat them well and Alexander allowed the Egyptians to worship their Gods freely. He linked Amun to his own God, Zeus.I feel he also treated people from other cultures with respect and saw them as equals to his own countrymen.
Vergina Sun wrote:Alexander was very wise and understanding to not only allow the Egyptians to worship their own gods, but worship them himself. Many people often underestimate the power of religion in bringing people together, especially when conquering. Many other men, might have tried to bring their own religions and force them on the Egyptians. The needs of the people should be important to any diplomat who wants to gain the favor of a country, and religion was a key piece to Egyptian lifestyle. Alexander was respected in Egypt because he allowed himself to accept different cultures and find ways to bring them together. I guess underneath it all, we aren't that different.
Vergina Sun wrote:If the Egyptians and Greeks could find religion in common with Zeus Ammon, it isn't too much of a surprise that Alexander the Great didn't find too much trouble in Egypt. Also, Alexander accepted their religion easily, giving an even closer relationship between him and the Egyptian people.
My readings indicate that Egyptians had a recent history of rebelling against the Achaemenids. Xerxes may have had unfriendly relations with the priests. As rocktupac says, Egypt was a rich province which was taxed heavily by the Achaemenids, and even more heavily to pay for wars. This would count as a large motivating factor for rebellions.

So, perhaps Alexander felt he had a shot at some “popularity” there. Egyptian sentiment against Achaemenids was at least as much of a factor as religion would have been in any diplomatic decision on the part of the Egyptians. However, the overwhelming factor would have been the fear of a repeat in Egypt of what happened in Tyre or Gaza.

Whether the Egyptian people “respected” Alexander or were “happy” to have him or how “close” they felt to him, we cannot possibly deduce from Alexander’s official propaganda. That idea has very little to back it up, historically speaking.

I have to disagree with this statement that Alexander treated non-Macedonians as equals. In his empire, Macedonians were very much at the top. Nineteen out of the twenty men wealthy enough to build triremes in India were Macedonian. It’s also illustrated by the seating arrangements at Opis – Macedonians in the inner circles, then Persians, then the rest.
ScottOden wrote:While Amun was taken to be the Egyptian Zeus by the Greeks, the Egyptians did not turn around and claim Zeus as the Greek Amun.
I think it’s important to note the Greeks believed that they had inherited their gods from the Egyptians. So it was not difficult for them to identify Egyptian gods with theirs. This was done well before Alexander, who wasn’t the first Greek or Macedonian to worship of Amun (as you pointed out). Alexander’s claim that he was the son of said god, however, met with much ridicule from the sharp-tongued Greeks. :)
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Post by Paralus »

Semiramis wrote: My readings indicate that Egyptians had a recent history of rebelling against the Achaemenids. Xerxes may have had unfriendly relations with the priests. As rocktupac says, Egypt was a rich province which was taxed heavily by the Achaemenids…
Money. Power. These are the things that matter here. The priestly caste in Egypt was a powerful – and not terribly skint – group. Egyptian Pharaohs had found out just how powerful. Heavy taxation will have reduced their income indirectly if not directly.

Egypt – the province too far – was always a problem for the Achaemenids. Near constantly in rebellion – particularly during successions – its people's relationship with successive Achaemenid rulers is a little more complex than not being able to practise their own religion. That is a notion that goes back to Cambyses and does not necessarily stand close scrutiny. I shall have to have a re-read of my Cyrus to Alexander where Briant addresses the Apis bull, Cambyses and the priests. There was much going on beyond the surface.

Achaemenid “practice” was the antithesis of this notion. Subject peoples were free to practice whatever religion took their fancy. Many were still governing themselves – internally – as they did before subjection. As long as the central power was obeyed and paid everything went swimmingly. Difficulties with the priestly caste in Egypt reflect similar difficulties with the temples and priestly caste in Babylonia and for similar reasons: these temples were big businesses that accrued decent moneys (and power) to themselves. A glance at the Babylonia temple records from the Achaemenid period will demonstrate this. They did not take to outside oversight always kindly.
Semiramis wrote: Whether the Egyptian people “respected” Alexander or were “happy” to have him or how “close” they felt to him, we cannot possibly deduce from Alexander’s official propaganda. That idea has very little to back it up, historically speaking.
I’d agree with that. No matter how well disposed and “happy” the Egyptians were to be under Alexander’s heel, the conqueror did not reciprocate: he essentially adopted the Achaemenid garrison points of the province (Elephantine, etc) and continued the revenue stream.

Given what we do know beyond the propagandistic stories of his short Egyptian sojourn, Alexander treated the place much as did the Achaemenids. As long as the Egyptians – priests included – remitted unto Alex what was Alex’s, he was happy. It is a matter for conjecture whether the Achaemenids ever had tax collector as corrupt and flagitious as Cleomenes.
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Re: Alexander and Egypt

Post by Paralus »

Theseus wrote:From what I have read the Egyptians were happy to have Alexander as their ruler because the Persians didn't treat them well and Alexander allowed the Egyptians to worship their Gods freely.
Which, I would argue, is no different to Achaemenid practice. The tradition of Cambyses being mad and cruel to Egyptians owes much to Herodotus' credulity and little to history. None of the Saite kings of Egypt were mad yet they too had spent much endeavour in extending their control to Nubia and Cyrene. Cambyses did no different as Pharaoh.

The Egyptian sources that Herodotus will have relied on will have been hostile to Persia. The province had spent much of the (fifth) century in revolt and will not have been well disposed to the Persians at all. The Saite Dynasty that Persia, and Cambyses, had brought to a close was something of an Egyptian renaissance; its fall was the end of Egypt and its interests in Coele-Syria.

There is no doubt that some of the reported “disrespect” of the Egyptian temples happened. The war was difficult and involved sieges and troops will do what troops do. The removal of the temple statues and treasures – painted as something targeted at Egypt – is an absolutely normal function of near-eastern warfare and occurred in Ionia, Lydia, Babylonia and elsewhere. Nothing unusual there.

Perhaps, though, what really puts Herodotus’ construct of Cambyses in a proper light is the epitaph of the Apis bull of 524 – the one Cambyses apparently murdered – discovered at the Serapeum of Memphis:
Briant, Cyrus to Alexander p 57

…under the Majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt […] endowed with eternal life, the god was brought in [peace toward the good West and laid to rest in the necropolis in] his [place] which is the place his Majesty made for him, [after] all [the ceremonies had been done for him] in the embalming hall […] It was done according to everything his majesty had said…
And the description on the sarcophagus:
[Cambyses], the king of Upper and Lower Egypt…made as his monument to his father Apis-Osiris a large sarcophagus of granite, dedicated by the king […], endowed with all life, with all perpetuity and prosperity(?), with all health, with all joy, appearing eternally as king of Upper and Lower Egypt.
It seems that Cambyses took his part in the full and proper funeral rites of this Apis bull and, further, did so as pharaoh. He would seem to have acted no different to the – supposedly – more “understanding” Alexander. The difference, if any, is that Cambyses – in stark contrast to Alexander – had to conduct a protracted war to win the province.

To finish, a quote from Briant’s Cyrus to Alexander:
As for the powerful Egyptian temples, the new pharaoh could not pursue a policy of unlimited generosity. He had to control them or risk reducing the conquest to a short lived pretense. It was the same in Babylonia, where the proclamations of devotion to Cyrus and Cambyses went hand in hand with increased fiscal pressure. It was not only the financial power of the new pharaoh that was at stake but also the reality of his power, so recent and fragile and threatened by opposition.
That opposition led, not surprisingly, by the last Saite pharaoh, Psammetichus III.
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Post by Alita »

I think Alexander did respect the Egyptians. Otherwise he would not have bothered making the risky journey into the desert to visit Siwa and enquire of a foreign oracle - after all, he'd already enquired of his Greek oracles back home (Delphi). Those are the actions of a man who puts great weight on the 'other' and seeks to be accepted by it, just as he would were he a native. I don't think he did everything in a calculating way; I think he reserved that mostly for the battlefield. He was obviously a deeply religious person and had a great respect and reverence for the Unknown God that Aristotelian thought had passed down to him and knew that, insofar as nobody on earth can know God completely, all religions are signposts pointing to God.

It doesn't amaze me that he would want to conquer and possess a country that had such a famous and influential civilisation; it was another great gem for his growing crown and a sign of the gods' favour and 'choosing' of him, as he probably saw it.

And it doesn't amaze me either that there don't seem to be records of his marvelling at the Pyramids or other accomplishments of the Egyptians; what amazes me is that, after himself accomplishing more than Hercules, the demi-god he'd been brought up with, and after being worshipped as a god himself, he still felt the need to offer sacrifices to the gods as if he still wasn't on their level and still very much needed their assistance. No matter how high and mighty he got, he never lost the ability to look up to something higher and more powerful than himself.
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