The death of Alexander - call for comments

[jona]

Dear friends,I have written a piece on the death of Alexander, seen from a Babylonian point of view. You can read it at http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/alexander_z6.html .Please feel free to comment upon it. In my never-ending quest for truth, justice & attention for a couple of little, old, damaged cuneiform tablets, I want to send this article to the *New York Review of Books*. It needs to be perfect, so criticise this piece with all your energy. I know my English is not perfect - teach me a lesson. Of course, the revised version will be sent to pothos too.Thanks!Jona

[yiannis]

Hi Jona,I can say (bearing in mind that I'm no scholar nor a native English-speaker) that I was able to read fluently through your text and understand the meaning of it. But furthermore I'd like to know how did Alexander fared towards the Chaldeans? Do we have any records of his behavior towards them, where were they placed in the court's protocol? Did he trusted their omens in decision making? Apparently he was hostile to the Zoroastrians.
Furthermore, I'm under the impression that the Babylonian tablets may record an abundance of information but most of (if not practically all of it) it either useless recitations of praises to the King. They lack any historical spirit. If that is the case, it should be mentioned as well. regards,
Yiannis

[jona]

"But furthermore I'd like to know how did Alexander fared towards the Chaldeans?"Plutarch mentions that the Chaldaeans had an important place at Alexander's court; he consulted them before he invaded India."Furthermore, I'm under the impression that the Babylonian tablets may record an abundance of information but most of (if not practically all of it) it either useless recitations of praises to the King. They lack any historical spirit."Yes and no. There are several types of cuneiform texts. The Astronomical Diaries are indeed simple records of matters facts, but the Chronicles, which are based on the Diaries are "real" historical sources (see http://www.livius.org/di-dn/diaries/ast ... aries.html ).The difference with historiography as we now it is the attention for causality and litterary refinement. On the other hand, the Babylonian Chronicles are every inch as objective as Herodotus and the Deuteronomist. Lavish praise for the king can be found in the so-called Royal Inscriptions, well-known from Assyria.Jona

[jona]

Susan asked me (by mail) what evidence there is for Alexander claiming to be protected by the sun god. Here it is:Herodotus 8.137 records the foundation legend of the Argead dynasty, and says that the sun protected its founder.The Argeads' dynastic symbol (http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/sun.jpg ) was a sun. (Not a star; a Macedonian coin with a sixteen-pointed disk, minted by a brother of Cassander in 316, can only be a sun.)Alexander likens himself to the sun in a letter to Darius ("the world can not have two suns, and Asia can not have two kings") (Plut. Mor. 180b).After battle, Alexander sacrificed to the sun (Diodorus, 17.89.3); in India, at the Hyphasis, Alexander dedicated his eastern border to the sun (according to Philostratus, VA 2.43 in a context that is so absurd that it must be authentic).Arrian's / Appian's statement that Alexander did not want to see the setting sun (Arr. 7.16.6; App. BC, 2.153).Perhaps Diogenes' famous reply "get out of my sun" has a pun too.I am not claiming that this evidence is conclusive.Jona

[abm]

Hi Jona,it's a very interesting article and it's very good initiative to 'promote' the Babylonian documents. There are, i think, two 'technical' errors in it: something is wrong in this sentence in the translation about the lunar eclipse of 20 September 331: "Its was completely covered at the moment when Jupiter set and Saturn rose". Probably something is missing after "Its". The last footnote-reference in the tekst should probably read "3" instead of "2".I also have a few other remarks:
-"Within a year's time, the Greek calendar had been reformed." Which Greek calender do you mean? (I presume you're talking about the Macedonian one) How was it reformed? (do you mean the equation of the Macedonian and the Babylonian calenders?)-you probably have good reasons to assume that Plutarch used Ptolemy, but I thought most scholars say Plutarch didn't read Ptolemy. I would be very interested in knowing why you state this. The same goes for dating Alexander's death on June 11. I've read Depuydt's article on it and I wasn't really convinced.kind regards,
Alexander

[jan]

Hello Jona,I enjoyed reading your article. To help you with your English, I would have to print it, and examine it further. But for a first reading, I must say it is quite thorough, even though I had not expected to learn so much about the battle of Gaugemela, but more about the death. Finally, when I reached the cause of death, there was little material to discuss. The most important thing to me was the recognition of the clouds in the sky by the Chaldeans in their scientific approach to this death. I wonder if rain followed. That would have been a good omen for Babylon had it happened, and probably propitious for Alexander as well as it is often mentioned that rain was a sign from Zeus. I suspect that his soul entered Heaven then! Thanks, Jona.with full respect and honor,Jan

[smittysmitty]

Hi Jona,Another reference of 'sacrifice to the Sun' which perhaps corroborates Diodorus' narrative, or for that matter Curtius'.
Curtius: [9.1.1] Alexander was pleased to have won so memorable a victory which, he believed, opened up to him the limits of the East. He made a sacrifice of animals to the Sun and, to strengthen his men's enthusiasm for undertaking the remainder of the campaign, commended them publicly in a general assembly and declared that any strength the Indians had possessed had been shattered in the recent contest.You more than likely have already come across this before, apologies if you have.
Cheers!

[jona]

"Within a year's time, the Greek calendar had been reformed."This is the Callippean reform. He took four metonic cycles and left out one day. The average length of the year was now almost accurate: 365,25 days, a length that is familiar to us. His cycle started in the summer of 330.Then the Ptolemy / Plutarch part. Yes, you are right: that Plutarch read Ptolemy is not proved, but the sage of Chaeronea makes a strange error, because he calls the supreme god of Babylon "Serapis" (section 73). This mistake can also be found in the "Royal Diary" (which we know through Arrian and Plutarch). There's a lot to be said about this document; I belong to those who think that it was composed by Eumenes and included in the book of Ptolemy, who changed the name of the supreme god from (no doubt) Zeus into Serapis, his personal favorite. I think this is an easy hypothesis that does justice to what we know; there are other
hypotheses which are equally plausible - but I did not want to decorate my article with an awful lot of tedious footnotes."I've read Depuydt's article on it and I wasn't really convinced."Well, I was, although it is still possible that Alexander died on the tenth and the Chaldaean on duty learned of it on the eleventh.Thanks for your reply!Jona

[ruthaki]

Hello Jonas, This was a truly amazing article. I only found two tiny errors (perhaps typos)
One in the line "So far the story by Diodorus" (should it be 'So far this is the story by Diodorus'?
And..."a member of a family" seemed like an incomplete sentence.
I am impressed with your English and the content of this very interesting article.

[amyntoros]

Jona! This is an enlightening and intriguing article - I've saved a copy along with the Bryn Mawr review - but I have a concern regarding your attempt to see it published in the New York Review of Books. Dr. Zimmerman in her LiveJournal pages remarked that if a person put their work on a web page and posted the URL anywhere on the internet, then publishing houses would consider said work to have "already been published." Now, she was specifically talking about fiction - does this also apply to other areas of publishing?Your remarks on Alexander and the sun god are very interesting. I'm not *completely* convinced of this god's particular importance, and I'd like to see more written about this. FYI, I'm very open to this hypothesis as it would add weight to my own conjecture that the Rhodian Colossus might have been a statue of Alexander as Helios. However, Alexander is also recorded as having offered prayers and sacrifices to other gods that appear repeatedly in the sources, and it is difficult to decide who has the most prominence. Has anyone ever compiled a catalogue of all such excerpts or is this a project still waiting to be attempted? Regarding your note on Heckel and Yardley's Historical Sources in Translation. I agree the book would be more complete with texts from a non-European source, but the inclusion of translations of cuneiform texts would be meaningless without your entertaining explanations. I wish you much success in your continuing efforts to draw attention to the Babylonian sources. :-)All the best,Linda Ann

[jona]

"Has anyone ever compiled a catalogue of all such excerpts or is this a project still waiting to be attempted?"Not that I know of. As far as I know, the link Alexander / Sun has only been proposed in a footnote in the article by Bert van der Spek I quoted in my article.As to Alexander / Colossus / Helius, I once noticed an article (in a collection of essays edited by M. Pfrommer, Alexander der Grosse [2001]) that linked the Colossus of Nero, the Colossus of Rhodes, and Alexander. I thought it was far-fetched, and I agree to your remark that the connection between Alexander and the sun is possible but unproven.Jona

[thom]

Jona:First, I agree with Linda that the NY Review of Books is likely to reject any article that has already been published on the Web, so I urge you to think of this as a first draft, or, perhaps better yet, a setting-up exercise for the "real" article.Second, I want to strongly suggest that you drop the reference to Heckel and Yardley's book altogether. It comes across as a bit sour-grapey - which you should be able to correct by re-phrasing it - but, more importantly, it comes across as a criticism of Heckel's professionalism. Given that neither Heckel nor his co-author is (or claims to be) proficient in Babylonian cuneiform, including Babylonian sources would actually be extremely UN-professional of them. Both can claim considerable fluency in Greek and Latin, and they have therefor quite rightly chosen to stick to sources in those languages.(Parenthetically, perhaps you and Bert van der Spek should consider collaborating with an Egyptologist on a book on non-European sources for Alexander historians.)Okay, as to substance, I've thought for some time that you may be placing too much emphasis on the interpretation you attribute to the Astronomical Diaries entry for 24 Ul++lu, 331 BCE. If the English translation you provide is reasonably accurate (and I assume that it is), it is equally easy to interpret the passage as meaning that Darius' troops deserted him AFTER the battle of Gaugamela was decided, and returned to their cities rather than follow him to Ecbatana. Whether you believe that to be true or not, you should at least acknowledge its possible validity, because, if I see the alternative explanation, I can assure you that the NYRoB editors will also see it.Next, your contention that Callisthenes "ordered" the translation of the Diaries is unsupported by any citation from the (Greek!) sources. Can you point to a passage in Aristotle or elsewhere that attributes a Greek translation of the Diaries to Callisthenes' influence? If not, I respectfully suggest that your enthusiasm has got the better of you and that it would be more defensible to say something like:"The prediction of the Chaldaeans had been correct, and Alexander was deeply impressed by their knowledge. He (or perhaps his scientific advisor, Callisthenes of Olynthus) immediately ordered the translation of the Astronomical Diaries, which were sent to the philosopher Aristotle."For flow, I'd move the paragraph that follows ("Incidentally, the words quoted above..."

[marcus]

Hi Jona,Good piece. I'd be a bit careful about calling Callisthenes Alexander's 'scientific adviser', because there's no indication that he was employed as anything other than Alexander's historian, and as a tutor to the royal pages.There's also been some doubt expressed as to whether the translation of the astronomical records did anything in particular to *further* existing Greek knowledge - there's an article on "Aristotle, Callisthenes and Alexander" (can't remember who wrote it off the top of my head) which goes into more detail about that. This in itself isn't really relevant to your article, although I would be wary of the 'scientific adviser' part.All the bestMarcus

[jona]

Thanks for your suggestions. They are really valuable.I have already made some changes; about the possibility to read the text of the A.D. as referring to desertion AFTER the battle, I still have to think about a brief and clear way of expressing myself."Next, your contention that Callisthenes "ordered" the translation of the Diaries is unsupported by any citation from the (Greek!) sources."It is mentioned by Simplikios' Commentary on Aristotle's *De Caelo* II 12 [Arist. 293a4]. This is a very late source, but the truth of Simplikios' words is established because he correctly translates the Babylonian title of the Diaries, massartu, as t+¬r+¬seis, which is illogical in Greek ("ephemerides" would be better) but keeps the double meaning of 'guarding' and 'observing' implied in the original.I also found this information in the work of the Arabian scientist Ibn Khaldun, who used other sources.Jona

[jona]

"There's also been some doubt expressed as to whether the translation of the astronomical records did anything in particular to *further* existing Greek knowledge"This is stated expressis verbis by Simplikios (see my reply to Thom Stark above), and there's some discussion about it. I just ordered a book on the reception of Babylonian and Egyptian science in Hellenistic Greece - let's see what is written. (Why did I forget the title?!)I'll make Callisthenes a courtier.ThanksJona