Source: here.
It’s June 323 BCE in Babylonia. In the grand palace of one of the most powerful Neo-Babylonian emperor of the past, Nebuchadnezzar II lies the lifeless body of another powerful monarch, Alexander III of Macedon. But the scorching heat of the Mesopotamian summer apparently does not take its toll on the body of the king. You see, in Alexander, the lines of history and myth tends to blur to the point of looking the same.
What caused his death is as much a matter of speculation today as it was then. From poison to malaria to typhoid, every theory has been suggested and the cause still remains inconclusive. But the reason of his death is not the topic of this post. Rather it’s what happens afterwards. Alexander was one such figure of ancient history whose death didn’t put a stop to the adventures that his short life had involved. This is the post about a snatch, a heist of not just anyone but of Alexander himself. This is a post about a stolen king.
Background
Ever since crossing the Hellespont (ancient name of Dardanelles Strait) in 334 BCE, Alexander had been unstoppable. The two pitched battles between the armies of Alexander and Darius at Halicarnassus and Issos had proved the might of the Macedonian far and wide. Even for that time, the news traveled fast about the hitherto invincible army and also of the brutal punishments that awaited anyone who dared to stop the invader. But the Egyptians were in a dilemma. The current rulers of Egypt, the Persians were very much hated in the country. The entire Persian rule in Egypt had seen many rebellions which were surely and brutally crushed. People were tired of this endless cycle of one unsuccessful rebellion after another. They had been impatiently waiting for a saviour but there was no native-born hero.¹ Egypt was waiting for another Ahmose I, the man who freed the country of the foreign Hyksos.+++(5)+++ But unfortunately, no one was coming.
“…faced with a stark choice between Darius and Alexander, the Macedonian looked like the lesser of two evils.”²
Like a gale, Alexander came in the closing of the year 332 BCE and Egypt surrendered. There was no resistance whatsoever. Out went the Persians and came the Macedonian. And then commenced another era of rule by yet another foreigner in Egypt. As to why is it important to know about the role of Egypt in this saga will be explained in a short while. Alexander’s first act after conquering Egypt was a strategic masterstroke when he went to “pay his respects to the sacred Apis bull.”³ But after this, quite opposite to the expectations, Alexander decided to stay and halt for a while in Egypt rather than go and fight another awaited battle with Darius. He just had laid the foundation of the city that was to be immortalized in the annals of history, Alexandria. May be the ancient and famous culture of Egypt was having its effect on him or may be he just had a penchant for knowing the mysteries of future, mysteries of life. We already know about his interactions with philosophers and yogis in India. But whatever was the reason, Alexander decided to go to the Siwa Oasis with its famous oracle of Amun, deep in the Sahara desert.
“He put his question to the oracle and received (or so he said) the answer that his soul desired.”⁴
Alexander left Egypt shortly afterwards, never to return. His brief stay of four months in Egypt and his visit to the Siwa Oasis was to be used masterly by a companion general of his, Ptolemy, son of Lagus. It was Ptolemy who later became the Pharaoh of Egypt and it was his ingenious and infamous plan of having Alexander in Egypt at any cost, notwithstanding Alexander’s death that resulted in the robbery of Alexander’s body.
Ptolemy and the Chaos
The untimely death of Alexander in 323 BCE, had left many unanswered questions. His body remained neglected in the peak summer of Babylon. The generals were busy in carrying out the business of the empire instead. The designated successor of Alexander III, Alexander IV was a little child at that time.
“Rather than admit that the king was dead, the leading men Alexander’s generals tried to carry on as before administering the empire, allocating governorship, minting Alexander’s coins, putting down the revolt in Greece.” ⁵
According to Quintus Curtius Rufus, Alexander was not given a funeral immediately. His corpse lay there, neglected for seven days. No one bothered with what was to be done. As one writer puts it perfectly – “This was an empire in denial.” Perdiccas, another important companion general of Alexander was now regent of the child Alexander IV and therefore of the empire. But between all the discussions regarding the body of Alexander, a decision was finally arrived at. Alexander was to be embalmed. Why? That we’ll discuss shortly.
From this chaos of uncertain circumstances, Ptolemy was granted the governorship of Egypt. The fact that Ptolemy, a childhood friend of Alexander accompanied him to the Siwa Oasis played an important role and Ptolemy was able to convince his fellow generals that he deserved the governorship of Egypt. He quickly moved to remove the unpopular satrap Kleomenes of Naukratis who was on his way to becoming the dictator of Egypt. It needs to be made clear that Ptolemy on his part was not doing some charity in removing Kleomenes. He very well knew that Egypt was one of “the wealthiest and easiest to defend of Alexander’s many conquests – ideally suited to become once again..a powerful kingdom in its own right.”⁶ Wily as ever, Ptolemy was just acting on a given opportunity. This story is about opportunities rather than integrity.
The Embalming
As explained above, the body of the king was to be embalmed. How this decision was arrived at? Well the generals finally took the hint from Alexander himself who had had given a huge funeral and embalmed the corpse of his companion +++(general)+++ Hephaestion the previous autumn in Ecbatana.⁷ As per Curtius, the Chaldeans and the Egyptians who were made in charge of the embalming were scared and shocked to see that the body of Alexander had no signs of decay even after so many in days in the summer. He looked alive! At this time it is perhaps better to remember that there could be fair amount of mythical storytelling behind this. But some have suggested that this could very well be a reasonable explanation for a biological phenomenon. Whatever was the case, the embalmers were scared not just of the lifelike appearance but also of the fact that the Greeks and the Macedonians never mummified there dead and were therefore unaware of the gory procedure. What if while carrying out the procedure, something went wrong? Macedonians might just come for their heads! Nonetheless, they proceeded to embalm the body.
“…Alexander unlike Hephaestion, was a king, and mummifying his corpse broke with the royal Macedonian tradition in spectacular fashion…It seems likely that following the example of Hephaestion…Alexander’s body was embalmed to preserve it for later cremation or burial in its final resting place. Perdiccas, Ptolemy and Seleucus probably did not intend Alexander to be mummified for eternity.”
N. J. Saunders, Alexander’s Tomb.
The Hearse
An order was given, probably by Perdiccas, that a magnificent hearse was to be made for the embalmed king. Construction was promptly started but the readers will be amazed to know that that the hearse took two years to complete and in the meanwhile, the dead king waited somewhere in Babylon. The hearse was to be an elaborate structure. On the orders of the generals, it was to signify the status of the body it was to carry. It had to be worthy of a monarch of multi ethnic empire.
Diodorus, probably deriving from the contemporary account of historian Hieronymus of Cardia, gave a detailed description of the catafalque that was to carry the corpse of Alexander. Twenty feet in length and thirteen feet in breadth,⁸ the giant vehicle was built with enormous use of gold. The entire design resembled a Greek temple with its Ionic columns. It was fit for a king who was being deified with each passing moment.
“On each of the four corners, perched a Nike victory statue, and a gold olive wreath on a stylized palm stood on the top of a barrel roof fashioned from golden scales.”⁹
In the interior of the temple, Alexander lay in a golden sarcophagus and a golden net hid the body. Four large paintings covered the sides, one of which involved a painting of Indian war elephants and the other showed Alexander in chariot with “his companions and a Persian Royal Guard.” As per Diodorus, it took well fed and ornately decorated sixty four mules to pull the enormous structure! It is said that Perdiccas had covered Alexander’s body with a royal purple cloak and even “tied a royal diadem across his forehead.”¹⁰
The Imagery
Like a poet who writes his poetry in a fashion that produces lifelike experiences in the minds of the reader, the same way Perdiccas and his fellow generals had chosen such an elaborate style for the final journey of Alexander that took two years to finish. Some may say that they genuinely wanted to pay such a homage to their king but when it comes to politics and power, each and every symbolism is just that in the end – a symbolism, a way to enhance and project power in the minds of its subjects. While not denying that there might be a hint of piety in this story, as far as Perdiccas was concerned, it was definitely and more importantly a propaganda machine
It signified the all encompassing empire of Alexander. After all, it is fact that the wheeled funerary cart was not Greek but an Asian concept.¹¹ The carefully chosen design of the cart, the imagery of Persian guards and the Indian elephants, the Egyptian embalming of the body, the very Greek design of the cart that resembled a Greek temple on wheels, every little nuance was there to project the might of an empire. The might that existed while Alexander was alive and the might that was to exist in future as well, the might whose reins were for now in the hands of the regent of the empire, Perdiccas. At the end, Alexander’s existence was never futile. His presence was fundamental when he was alive, his corpse was going to be useful as well.
But Perdiccas was not the only one thinking of the future and the utility of having Alexander’s tomb in their sphere of influence. Ptolemy was going through a churning of his own. There had existed an interesting Macedonian tradition, the one in which the person who had the honour of burying the king was considered to have received legitimacy to be the future ruler, the successor himself. And Ptolemy knew this fact that if Perdiccas was to be allowed to have his way with the final journey of Alexander, he would become paramount. The aura and the myth around Alexander which had been created to the point of him being deified was not going to go waste.
Trouble in Egypt
After removing Kleomenes, Ptolemy might have thought that his ascent to the throne of Egypt was going to be smooth but that was not the case. Having political and economic power in his hands was not enough to rule Egypt which in the ancient world in general, it never was actually. Ancient kings ruled with a perfect combination of political and economic authority at one hand and religious and moral on the other. Egypt was no exception to this rule. This is the reason that every Pharaoh in the vast past of ancient Egypt had made sure to get this message across its subjects that they had Gods on their side. Some even went to the limit of proclaiming themselves as Gods. Ptolemy as a foreigner was seriously lacking in this department.
But he had one aspect going in his favour – Alexander himself. Alexander’s personality and his appeal in Egypt was different. Politics abhors vacuum – this was as much a reality then as it is now. Persian rulers in Egypt were very loathed and as mentioned above, the very first act of Alexander after conquering Egypt was to pay his respects to the sacred Apis bull and then his journey to the Siwa Oasis for the oracle of Amun. This had worked wonders and created an aura of him being a legitimate ruler of Egypt in the society at that time. But Ptolemy knew that a foreigner was not going to get lucky twice. Egyptians might have accepted Alexander, but they were not going to easily accept Ptolemy. Having Alexander’s tomb in Egypt might solve that problem for Ptolemy. And he was therefore resolute to have the dead king in his kingdom!
The Chosen Destination
It is said that it was Alexander’s dying wish to be buried in Siwa, the place where he had heard his oracle, the oracle that had confirmed his divinity for him, that he was the son of Zeus Ammon. But the marshals were against this idea. Another option for the burial was Babylonia. What was the role of the territory of Babylonia in this game of musical chairs? Perdiccas was ruling there, so why not bury the king in Babylonia itself? Some even favoured this choice but the conservative ranks of the army wanted a mausoleum of Alexander in his ancestral land.
They thought that it would be fitting to have him buried with traditional rites along with his ancestors in the royal burial ground at Aegae (Vergina) in Macedonia. While the negotiations were going on, Perdiccas had to leave Babylonia at an urgent business of quashing a rebellion in the Cappadocian mountains, before finally deciding the chosen destination of Alexander’s body.
But, another fact was tempting Perdiccas to have Alexander buried in Macedonia – the marriage proposals. Antipater, another important Macedonian general who was left incharge of the European possessions of the empire offered his daughter Nicaea’s hand in marriage to Perdiccas. Before Perdiccas could think much about it, another counter proposal was made by Alexander’s mother Olympia to give the hand of her daughter and Alexander’s sister Cleopatra in marriage to Perdiccas.+++(4)+++ These reasons were tempting Perdiccas to confirm Macedonia as the final resting place of Alexander.
On the other hand, knowing very well that having Alexander buried in Egypt was certainly going to be helpful to Ptolemy, there was no way Perdiccas was going to allow that. Relations between Ptolemy and Perdiccas were getting fractured all the more. It is even said that Ptolemy had in fact got Kleomenes murdered on the suspicion of his loyalty to Perdiccas. So having Alexander’s mausoleum in Egypt would be equal to giving the kingdom to Ptolemy on a platter and Perdiccas was not going to be an accomplice in his rival’s ascent to power.
“..Perdiccas also had long term issues to consider. He would control the empire only until Alexander’s son reached maturity. Controlling the final destination of Alexander’s body and administering Macedonian funeral rites was vital if he was to act as a strong and effective regent who could count on the backing of the army. It was a difficult balancing act.”
N. J. Saunders, Alexander’s Tomb.
But Perdiccas made a mistake. He didn’t consider that Ptolemy might be thinking the same. A heist was going to take place right under their noses. A king, albeit a dead one was going to be stolen!
The Stealing
This whole time, Perdiccas had given Arrhidaios the responsibility to monitor the construction of the hearse. When the hearse was about to be completed, as mentioned above Perdiccas went north to Cappadicia. This was to be his biggest mistake. Arrhidaios had decided to side with Ptolemy in this saga and he was keeping Ptolemy updated about the current situation and what Perdiccas was thinking about Alexander’s destination. On the other hand, Antipater got to know about the marriage proposal of Cleopatra to Perdiccas and the messenger was Antigonas, the general in charge of Asia Minor. Perdiccas knew that this proposal of Cleopatra which he was seriously considering would become a problem if Antipater got the hint of it. But it was too late. The cat was already out of the bag and Antipater decided to take revenge. Perdiccas had to now open a second front in Hellespont and he left Eumenes, his loyal confidant in charge there. But Perdiccas was clearly outstretched.
Taking advantage of the chaos, Arrhidaios contrived a plan with Ptolemy. They were to take the cortege out from Babylon and towards Egypt without telling Perdiccas. With Alexander’s body safe under the sarcophagus, his final journey began. The journey must have been a spectacle for the populace. With the hearse decorated with such enormous amount of gold, the effect that it must have had on the onlookers must had been awe inspiring. It is said that thousands of people came to admire it especially when it did start moving.¹²
Diodorus paints a rosy picture suggesting that Ptolemy went to greet the body of Alexander, that he “went to Syria to meet it, and recieving the body, considered it worthy of greatest care.” But that was not the case. Ptolemy in fact had decided to have Alexander in Egypt by hook or by crook. And the fact that Perdiccas had intended otherwise was not going to be an hindrance in his scheme. The scheme might not have been that difficult to carry out as well. A funeral cortege after all was not going in speed even if being pulled by sixty four mules.
“..the army that Ptolemy sent to give a dignified military welcome to the body may have been there to defend his winnings.”¹³
Perdiccas got to know about the latest developments within days and he sent his two brother in laws – Attalus and Polemon ¹⁴ to intercept and stop the cortege in its way which as already stated, wasn’t going to be that difficult given the speed of cortege. They met with Arrhidaios near Damascus and argued with him about the treason but before anything could be finally decided, Ptolemy reached there with his army to “greet” Alexander’s body. And now Alexander was to be taken to Egypt. Alexander was successfully stolen.
When in Egypt
Turning southwards, going through the coastline of Palestine and Gaza, Ptolemy then turned westwards and reached Egypt but rather than taking Alexander’s body to Siwa where Alexander had intended to be buried, Ptolemy took the body to the city of Memphis, the traditional capital of the Pharaohs. He was using Alexander to legitimize his own rule and consolidate his hold on Egypt. Now he moved quickly to have Alexander buried in Memphis before anymore disturbances can be created by Perdiccas which Ptolemy was sure were to come.
“If Alexander could be buried quickly enough, then Perdiccas’s dilemma would become a crises. It was one thing to seize an unburied body, quite another to desecrate a tomb in order to retrieve it.”¹⁵
Ptolemy finally buried Alexander with proper Macedonian funerary rites in Memphis knowing very well what it meant in Macedonian tradition. Perdiccas on the other hand was not going to let this humiliation go. He now had plans of his own. Within weeks of the burial, Perdiccas marched on Egypt in 320 BCE leaving Eumenes to defend Hellespont against Antipater. The two generals, Ptolemy and Perdiccas were against each other across the Nile. But Perdiccas’ s attack was ably confronted by Ptolemy who by blinding the lead elephant of his enemy and killing his mahout, completely outmaneuvered Perdiccas. Perdiccas now decided to stage another attack, this time in the night and capture Alexander’s body and reverse his defeat. But his army suffered huge losses while crossing the Nile and another defeat followed. The army was now frustrated. They have had enough of this war which many of them had grown to consider as futile. The army mutinied and Perdiccas was assasinated.
Conclusion
A writer has correctly summarised the whole affair – “Alexander after his death traveled more than many Greeks in their lifetime.” He while being alive had created an empire and was to be an important instrument of establishment of a kingdom even after his death. Alexander when alive had prayed in the temple of the patron deity of Memphis, Ptah and that had increased his popularity in Egypt. Ptolemy used this ingeniously to create an aura of divinity around Alexander and bring the powerful priesthood of Ptah under his influence, thereby consolidating the foundations of the Ptolemaic rule.
After the capital was moved to Alexandria, Alexander was moved there as well and was made the patron deity of Alexandria where he was to lay for ever. The stolen king was now “reinterred in a glass sided coffin”¹⁶, but not in a public place for everyone to see but rather in the royal grounds of the Ptolemaic dynasty. And this is how a stolen king was made the foundation of an entire kingdom.
References
- Toby Wilkinson, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid
- Erskine, A. (2002). Life after Death: Alexandria and the Body of Alexander.*Greece & Rome,*49(2), 163-179. Retrieved December 21, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/826904
- Toby Wilkinson, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.
- Nicholas J. Saunders, Alexander’s Tomb: The Two-Thousand Year Obsession to Find the Lost Conquerer
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- Andrew Erskine, Life after Death: Alexandria and the Body of Alexander.
- ibid.
- N*.* J*.* Saunders*, Alexander’s Tomb.*
- ibid.
- Toby Wilkinson, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.
