From now on my travel stories are available only on REISERVARINGEN.

So many books and so many pages have been filled with all aspects of and opinions about Alexander the Great that in the process we generally forget his father, King Philip II of Macedonia (ISBN 0300164769). What a shortcoming! Personally, I always believe that if the world had not known Alexander, we would have talked about Philip the Great instead – maybe we still should… It is exciting to read that Worthington shares this idea with me, yet who am I, for I never could have assembled all the information he did! I wouldn’t even try! 

When it comes to Alexander the Great, we have a handful of writers from antiquity who made the effort to tell us about his life and conquests, and although sketchy at times, there are great authors like Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus and Curtius Rufus who put down their knowledge based on contemporary sources that are lost to us today. In any case, we have a rather solid base, certainly in comparison to Philip who went into history in the shadow of his son – unfortunately. 

I’m extremely impressed by Ian Worthington’s research for it is nearly hopeless to find anyone who wrote about Philip in his days or even shortly after that. The scarce sources are very fragmentary and very much influenced by their time frame. We are lucky to have large fragments by Theopompus of Chios, who visited Macedonia in Philips days, and by Diodorus who had to rely on early works. The chore of literature comes from Demosthenes in Athens, who grasped every single occasion to belittle and harshly criticize Philip – even if he had to make up his own version of the events. He utterly hated Philip, so we cannot rely too much on his opinion, can we? Besides, Demosthenes’ speeches were oratory and not history, and he made sure to turn the events to his own advantage. There is Plutarch’s life of Demosthenes in which Philip is being mentioned and finally later sources like Justin, Polybius (2^nd century BC) and the geographer Strabo (1^st century BC/1^st century AD). But in the end Philip’s campaigns remain very vague and hard to date. Philip deserves better. Had it not been for his father, Alexander would not and could not have done what he did. 

Macedonia was a poor territory where sheepherders and farmers lived in constant war with one another. Philip took things in his own hands, creating a professional army, consolidating his borders with fortified cities, fighting, bribing and cunning his enemies in such ways they never knew what to expect. He turned gold and silver mining to a profitable business, built roads and canals, received ambassadors at his court to tell them what they wanted to hear but not acting accordingly. The unification of Macedonia was a very strenuous and lengthy project that in the end paid off very well. We tend to forget that it is Philip who created the first land state in history, Greece, replacing the obsolete city state system. With the Peace of Corinth he finally united all his previous adversaries, including Athens into one entity. What a formidable achievement that was! 

Worthington has gathered all the available details to support each step. After Philip’s assassination, Alexander has all the elements to make the next move, and that is to invade Asia. 

The book concludes with a number of Appendixes where the author takes a close look at several specific aspects, such as The Question of Macedonian Ethnicity (very much in the news these days!); Macedonia before Philip II; Pella (and the Royal Palace); Philip’s Apparent Divinity (very interesting since Alexander’s divinity is under close scrutiny these days); and finally The Vergina Royal Tombs (including the recent theory that Philip’s tomb might not be his). 

Personally I find this book a real jewel. There is so much information there that Worthington had to dig out from time before time it seems, with all the references to the books and articles where he found it. The book is a 2008 edition and truly contains all the latest information available. 

A precious source of information for all of us who want a better understanding of Alexander!

For those who are looking for something very different to read, this book City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish, Greek Papyri Beneath the Egyptian Sand Reveal a Long-Lost World by Peter Parsons definitely is the answer. 

It is about the Greeks who settled in Egypt shortly after Alexander’s time, i.e. during the reign of the Ptolemy’s. They often occupied important hierarchic positions as most of them could read and write, where for the Egyptians these skills were limited to a selected few scribes. The Egyptian hieroglyphs were, of course, a handicap for the average writer needed to know at least 10,000 signs by heart. In any case, the Greeks knew their business and introduced their alphabet which very soon became the official language in Egypt (How proud Alexander the Great would have been had he witnessed this!) 

We have to step back in time to 1897, when two young English archeologists started digging through several sandy mounds outside the antique city of Oxyrhynchus, a little south of today’s Cairo discovering to their amazement that these old rubbish dumps contained precious bits and pieces of papyri, sometimes even entire sections of old books. 

A small portion of about 10% turn out to be official documents, theater plays, poems and other literature. The remaining part are letters and notes from daily life that shed a clear light on the organization and structure of such a town. There are complaints about the water supply, the constructions of new streets or the building of houses, disputes with the administration or neighbors’ quarrels, etc. And then to think that this is only the tip of the ice(sand)berg for about 500,000 pieces are being kept at the British Museum, carefully stored inside old newspaper pages locked inside metal boxes. Whenever such a box is opened for examination nobody knows what to expect. The bits of papyri have to be deciphered first after which the experts have to find out in which context to fit them. 

Most of these papyri date from the 2^nd and 3^rd century, i.e. from Roman times as the lower layers of rubbish have mostly been damaged by ground-water. The top layers on the other hand have been used by the local population over the centuries as fertilizer for their meager fields! This means that from time to time the patient reader lays hands on excerpts from books whose existence is known but who have not come to us. I still have a secret hope that one day new information about Alexander the Great will surface from this rubble – from Ptolemaic times for instance, it is a possibility, isn’t it? That would be a highly interesting discovery! The thought alone … 

Yes, my imagination is giving me wings when I read a book like this. Such a source of information, and who knows what else we can learn when these personal letters, shopping lists, wills, fragments from Greek literature and censured Gospels will be deciphered. This will evidently take several more years since the scholars who are familiar enough with ancient texts to be able to place them in their pertaining context are very few. 

Yet each chapter makes exciting reading, like for instance the one about the dikes. By the time the flooding of the Nile was expected, all citizens had the obligation to repair and rise their portion of the dikes, and to clear their section of irrigation canals. Official dike-watchers inspected the operations very closely, and you were not allowed to charge anyone money instead of work or to subcontract the job. When the Romans ruled Egypt, the system was already in place for thousands of years and it worked the same way till 1889! Well, I always thought that it were the Dutch who invented the water management with their dikes, requesting each landowner to clear his own stretch of canal! It is amazing to realize that the more I dig in ancient history (in the broadest possible way) the more I see the wheel is being reinvented over and over. 

There definitely is enough reading material here to entice everybody’s imagination and lift a small corner of the veil of time. The voices of the marketers come back to life, from the donkey-drivers to the wine-merchants in and around the once flourishing bustling city of Oxyrhynchus. 

Whoever wants more in depth information about these exciting papyri of Oxyrhynchus can click on the link of the University of Oxford, Department of Papyrology.

On several occasions and like so many fervent admirers, I pleaded for the salvation of this gorgeous Roman spa in the vicinity of the ancient city of Pergamon in western Turkey. (Read my earlier stories published on this weblog My heart is bleeding for Allianoi and Still no hope for a better outcome). I definitely share the hurt expressed by Dr. Yaras who led the excavation team at this site for the past ten years when he says, "This is the murder of history". How true!

A painful picture of a man sitting on the edge of the 2^nd century Roman bridge in the middle of a nearly flooded city accompanies his words. Shortly the entire site will disappear to the bottom of this new reservoir at the foot of the irrigation dam, and it will be covered beneath nearly 100 feet of water and silt. The Yortanli dam is part of another huge hydro engineering program aiming to keep up with the country's rapid economic development – that is at least what the officials say.

Dr Yaras has been able to salvage some 11,000 artifacts, uncovering only about 20 percent of the site that is now lost for ever – a rather poor consolation, if any. By now we are familiar with the sights of the beautiful mosaic floors at this ancient health settlement believed to be one of the largest and best preserved in the world. The Turkish government doesn’t seem to care or not to care enough, the race to double their power output by 2020 prevails over the preservation of the country’s and the world’s history.

It is a fact that when exploratory work started in 1998 as part of a survey for the dam, Dr Yaras had no idea of what he would find. But once the still-functioning thermal baths and bronze medical instruments were exposed to broad daylight, a real race was put in motion to rescue the city and to force Ankara to scrap the dam – to no avail! As he now witnesses the raising waters engulfing the ruins he has fought so hard to save, Dr Yaras says it feels like losing of a child.

As shown in my last article Allianoi in pictures, the site was first filled up with sand – an attempt to protect the ruins although archaeologists disagree. In the last days of 2010 the flooding was set in motion. The water by now has risen approximately 6 feet but will eventually reach 100 feet. We probably will never know the full meaning and extend of Allianoi.

Sadly, Allianoi is only one example among so many others (cf. Zeugma). How many more will follow?

Click here for the complete article Dams power Turkey’s future, but drown its rich history by Alexander Christie-Miller, that also maps other natural and cultural threatened areas all over Turkey. [photographs from the Christian Science Monitor]

Every day new archeological discoveries are being made, either in Turkey or anywhere else in the World. Most of them never reach the news, illegal finds immediately disappear in the obscure circuits of the black market, while legal finds are simply moved to the storehouses of the museums. But from time to time there are exceptions, like this grave that was unearthed last summer (2010 – The Hurriyet Daily News). 

It all started apparently with illegal diggings, but when faced with an impressive sarcophagus the find could no longer be hushed and the appropriate archeological services were called in. This happened in Zeus-Karios, near Milas, only miles away from Bodrum – well relatively speaking, of course. 

 
[picture from The Hurriyet Daily News]

So now they found this sizable sarcophagus made as early as 390 BC for King Hekataios, nobody less than the father of King Mausolos – yes the one from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos (i.e. today’s Bodrum). Such exciting news! Archeologists are talking about one of the most important discoveries in modern times and they are already comparing it with the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great from Sidon which is now on display at the Museum in Istanbul – and that is no nonsense. 

The measurements alone are more than impressive, 2.75 meter long by 1.85 meter wide – it’s huge! The sarcophagus evidently needs cleaning and more analysis are required, but I can hardly wait to see it for myself! Meanwhile we have to be contend with a few rare pictures as seen on this link.

No, I’m not starting a lesson in Greek, but certain words simply cannot be translated. The kausia is a typical flat Macedonian hat that was particularly popular during the Hellenistic period, perhaps even before the days of Alexander the Great. For myself I can easily picture Alexander wearing this pancake hat, certainly after seeing this small terracotta statue of a young boy at the British Museum in London. But this is, of course, my personal opinion. 

According to certain studies, the so-called lion hunt mosaic from Pella shows Alexander wearing such a kausia, but this appears to be a much flatter hat maybe even made of straw. This form is more closely related to what the Bactrian Kings have been wearing during the centuries following Alexander’s conquest of their land as shown on their coins. Personally I like to refer to that headdress as a colonial sun helmet. 

Anyway, I can tell you that the best story comes from Afghanistan! The men there still take pride in wearing a kind of wide woolen beret entirely inspired on the Macedonian kausia, which they call pakul, the traditional national headdress. In fact it is worn by specific tribes in a much wider area reaching all the way to Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as well. 

 
Yet another piece of Alexander’s heritage, isn’t that amazing?

About a year ago or so, I watched the world famous Turkish dance group Fire of Anatolia performing their version of “Troy”. It was a quite festive, captivating and convincing show that left a deep impression on my poor soul. And just now I happen to come across a few videos on YouTube and I thought it would be good idea to share these with the people of my world. 

I expected that only the Greeks were born with the genes of Homeros in their blood, but I discovered that the Turks share this heritage too. Using projection texts and live-voices they cite lines from The Ilias so that the audience can easily follow the story told in both Turkish and English. 

The artists are simply awesome! Magnificent dancing, perfect movements of de dancers in splendid costumes, moving in a unison that is quite exceptional! It feels as if there is some invisible figure pulling strings to coordinate every single jump and movement as one. Absolutely unbelievable. I heard that people from Asia and Eastern Europe have a innate sense for rhythm, something we lack in the west – and it definitely does show here. There is no hiatus or boring moment. A successive alternation of fast and slow dance, romantic scenes like Helen and Paris, fighting actions of the Myrmidons against the Trojans or single handed between Hector and Achilles, it all evolves on the exact beat of the music. It simply leaves you breathless at times! As to the costumes, they reminded me very much of the movie with Brad Pitt and it is easy to recognize who is playing and dancing which role. 

All in all very much worth to be seen wherever you are on this planet. Before the show started and during the intermission they presented a list of the countries and cities where they performed and still will perform their shows Fire of Anatolia and Troy. There simply is no excuse not to attend any of these venues since there is a bit of everything for everyone, no matter is you are looking for dance, ballet, folk music or history, you’ll love it!

What Andrew Chug has done in this book A Reconstruction of Cleitarchus (ISBN 9780955679025) is comparing the surviving texts from Curtius, Diodorus and Justin to filter out the original work these authors have used themselves to filter out what was written by Cleitarchus of Alexandria. To a lesser extent Chugg also includes Arrian, although this author mainly based his book on the texts left by Ptolemy, and the Metz Epitome. A very handy drawing with the links used by each and every author in antiquity is quite revealing.  A titanic job, nothing less.

Cleitarchus, son of Deinon, wrote his account in the decades following Alexander’s death and most of the surviving ancient texts were more or less based upon his work, although not a single copy has come to us since they all were destroyed or discarded at some time or another. 

Chugg manages to pinpoint which texts or phrases are used commonly by Curtius and Diodorus, with eventually an addition when Justin uses the same words. A Table overview accounting for the matches is very helpful. And so is the Table showing the first division of the Satrapies soon after Alexander’s death in Babylon listing each territory with the name of the appointed governor (satrap) as given by Diodorus, Justin, Curtius, Cleitarchus himself, as well as separately by Arrian, Dexippus and the Metz Epitome. Sounds all very technical but it becomes quite interesting when in the end we are able to read this part of Alexander’s history as it was presumably put down by Cleitarchus in the first place. A daring undertaking but a highly interesting one. 

Most of Chugg's book is centered around Cleitarchus' Book 13, covering the period from July 324 BC to July 323 BC and beyond, i.e. the very last year of Alexander’s life. The subjects treated here are many: the Flight of Harpalus; the Exiles Decrees, the Mutiny at Opis; Death of Hephaistion; The Cosseans; Death in Babylon; Aftermath and Entombment. After a detailed comment and investigation of each chapter, one can read the full text as it may have been put down by Cleitarchus initially. A captivating story, especially since certain paragraphs have been put back in their original sequence ensuring the continuity of events. 

The book ends again with a Table giving for each episode in Cleitarchus' terms the corresponding sources and references with additional comments in the last column. If after all that you still have questions, please do get in touch with Andrew Chugg in person.

Sometimes illegal digs reveal unexpected new prospects, like last summer (2010) in Didyma on Turkey’s west coast. 

Didyma, the site of an ancient oracle, literally means “twins”. The Temple of Apollo is well-known meanwhile and a true Mecca for the tourists in the area. You may remember that the god Apollo had a twin sister, the goddess Artemis. So it is not impossible to suppose there could be a nearby temple dedicated to her also. 

Illegal digs have recently uncovered remains of a wall, suggesting by its size and location that it might well pertain to another temple. Because of the city’s name Didyma, the dedication to Artemis is rather obvious but so far this is only speculation and we’ll have wait for the outcome of further excavations on the site. 

Meanwhile more excavation works are being undertaken on the ancient Sacred Road that once connected Milete to Didyma, more specifically on the portion between the Apollo Temple and Panormos Harbor. 

I’m curious to hear what other surprises this site will reveal!

I attended this very interesting lecture about Alexander the Great  in Egypt given by Prof. Olaf Kaper at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam. He had my undivided attention since he has been working on the site of Siwah for several years and he managed to give me information I wasn’t aware of before. 

He started introducing Alexander the Great with his itinerary from Pella over the Hellespont, mentioning the battlefields of Granicus and Issus, and the siege of both Tyre and Gaza till he arrived in Pelusium, his first city in Egypt. From here he went to Memphis, the capital of Egypt in his days, where he received a delegation from Cyrene that brought him horses among their gifts. I remember when I was in Cyrene (now in Libya) how their horses in antiquity were praised for their stamina especially on a battlefield, so it felt like meeting up with old friends. The speaker speculated that this may have been an invitation for Alexander to visit Cyrene, a Greek colony at that time. In any case, it doesn’t seem too clear whether Alexander was heading for Cyrene or already for Siwah when he left Memphis for the northern coastline where he chose the location to build Alexandria. He must have traveled along the main stream of the Nile to Naucratis, another Greek city that lived off the commerce with the Egyptian hinterland, before turning westward. 

The choice for the location of Alexandria is geographically speaking excellent with the natural outline of a harbor and an inland lake with fresh water. Strangely enough I heard in the meantime from Richard Miles on BBC that these waters were brackish, a huge mistake of Alexander. It would have been Ptolemy’s doing to build a 30 km long canal to the Nile and adequate underground cisterns to provide the necessary water for the city! I can’t believe Alexander would make such a mistake, for whoever in his right mind would found a city in place where there is no water? Certainly not Alexander!. Back to the lecture though, we are shown a few pictures with temple remains of Paraetonium, another Greek colony on the Mediterranean, from where Alexander turns south towards Siwah – leaving Cyrene for what it was. 

Olaf Kaper then draws a comparison and parallel between the Temple of Zeus-Ammon in Cyrene, built in Greek style (note that this temple in Cyrene is larger than the Parthenon in Athens!), and the Temple of Ammon-Zeus in Siwah, built in Egyptian style. Yet the temple of Siwah shows several Greek characteristics, like the intermittent use of large and small stones in the walls and the half-Doric columns at the entrance, for instance. He assumes that Greek architects from Cyrene were hired to build the Siwah temple. Then follow a couple of views of the empty desert landscape, a stretch of 300 kilometers which Alexander and his close companions covered on horseback in eight days, getting lost a couple of times, as we know… Then some great pictures of the Siwah oasis itself that turns out to be more than 60 km wide! I had no idea of the size! 

We know that Alexander entered the Temple of Siwah alone, but now I’m told that the temple was used only to ask the question(s) to the god whereas the answer(s) was(were) given in the temple on the opposite hill! The announcements there were a public affair, so Alexander’s entourage must have heard the answers of the god although they may not have known the questions … There was a holy road connecting both hills of which little or nothing remains today. The temple remains on top of the hill across the temple of Siwah itself are almost entirely gone, except for a few low walls. They were rather complete till the end of the 19^th century when the local governor decided to blow them up in order to use the stones for his own house. Yet, don’t know where that was or is … 

 
I also learned something new about the picture of Zeus with the rams horns. It seems that this custom was born in Cyrene for Ammon-Zeus (Ammon, the Libian god is spelled with double  mm, while the Egyptian Amon is written with one m). The idea has traveled from Cyrene to Egypt and has reached Alexander in the process. When I later returned to the Hermitage Museum, I noticed a coin of the “old” Ammon-Zeus with horns which looked something like these examples:   

And there is more interesting news, at least to me. When Alexander left Siwah, he traveled East towards the Nile along a known road which he was told was shorter. That road runs from one oasis to the next, of course, and in the second oasis after Siwah, archeologists have recently discovered a Greek Temple dedicated to Alexander with several inscriptions and pictures related to the great man! Unbelievable and unexpected. 

My knowledgeable speaker also mentions Alexander’s instructions to rebuild the “bark” area of the temples of Karnak and Thebe, in fact the sacred inner area of the temple that held the bark in which the god was carried around on heydays. He also had beautiful photographs of some walls in Karnak where hieroglyphic inscriptions referred to King Philip Arrhideus. I have no idea why he is being mentioned here and I forgot to ask Olaf Kaper … sorry. 

And as a matter of conclusion, Olaf Kaper warmly recommends the book Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher, a contemporary story that takes place in the oasis of Siwah and gives an excellent idea of the location. So more reading material to be put on my wish list!