Hybrid Lecture: Alexander the Great in Jerusalem and the Origins of the Alexander Romance

UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL:

Alexander the Great in Jerusalem and the Origins of the Alexander Romance

The ACE [Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology] department is thrilled to announce an Ancient History Seminar titled 'Alexander the Great in Jerusalem and the Origins of the Alexander Romance' delivered by Ory Amitay, (University of Haifa) on the 6 May 2025, Rendall Building, Lecture Theatre 7.

Tuesday 6 May 5pm (UK) | Rendall, Lecture Theatre 7 or online | Open to the public, and University of Liverpool staff and students
This is a hybrid event, we encourage in-person attendance which facilitates discussion. To join on zoom please click here.

Abstract

The topics presented in this talk come from a comprehensive study of the tradition concerning the meeting between Alexander the Great and the Judeans of Jerusalem. Historically, even if Alexander did visit Jerusalem, it was essentially a non-event, nothing to write home about. The historical void provided an opportunity for consecutive Judean storytellers to fill it with political myths of their own creation.

The overall purpose of these myths—so I argue in my new book Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History (OUP, 2025) —was on the one hand to negotiate the installation of successive forms of foreign rule over Judea, and on the other to find room for these foreign rules within Judean sacred history. The earliest of these stories, scarcely discussed in previous scholarship, is preserved in the epsilon recension of the Alexander Romance (AR).

[...]

Follow the link for more details.

The abovementioned New Book just came out:

Alexander the Great in Jerusalem

Myth and History

Ory Amitay

£84.00

Hardback
Published: 18 April 2025 (Estimated)
220 Pages
234x156mm
ISBN: 9780198929529

Also Available As:
E-book

Description

Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History discusses four different stories told in antiquity about the meeting between Alexander the Great and the Judeans of Jerusalem. In history, this meeting passed without noticeable events. Into the historical void stepped various Judean storytellers, who wrote not what was, but what could (or even should) have been.

The tradition as a whole deals with an issue that resurfaced time and again in ancient Judean history: conquest and regime installment by new foreign rulers. It does so by using Alexander as a cipher for a current Hellenistic and Roman foreign rule. The earliest version can be traced to the context of the Seleukid monarch Antiochos III "the Great", and postulates a Judean text from that time that has been hitherto unknown, and which survived in a Byzantine recension (epsilon) of the Alexander Romance. The second and third chapters turn to rabbinic sources, and deal with the Judean approaches and attitudes towards Roman occupation and rule, first at the advent of Pompey and then at the institution of Provincia ludaea at the expense of the Herodian dynasty. The final story is the most famous, previously considered the earliest, rather than the latest; that of Josephus.

Alexander the Great in Jerusalem demonstrates how the historical tradition consistently maintained the moral and sacral superiority of the Jerusalem temple and of Judaism, making Alexander either embrace monotheism or prostrate himself before the Judean high priest. This not only bolstered Judean self-confidence under conditions of military and political inferiority, but also brought the changing foreign rulers into the fold of Judean sacred history.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on Alexander the Great and his connection with ancient Jewish traditions, notably in the Alexander Romance, see here and links. There are lots of links there too to posts on books about Alexander and the Alexander tradition published in recent years

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Alexander the Great in a Jewish mosaic?

HUQOQ AGAIN: Mosaic of Alexander the Great meeting a Jewish priest is the first ever non-biblical scene to be discovered inside a synagogue

• Artwork was uncovered in a fifth-century synagogue in Huqoq, Israel
  May depict Alexander the Great, based on the presence of elephants
  Scene is the first non-biblical story to be found in an ancient synagogue
  Depictions of Biblical hero Samson are also part of the decorative floor

(SARAH GRIFFITHS, Daily Mail)

Although I have mentioned this mosaic before, I don't think I have highlighted the details of this particular interpretation of it:

The largest top strip contains the scene showing a meeting between two men, who perhaps represent the legendary warrior and a Jewish high priest.

In the scene, a bearded soldier wearing battle dress and a purple cloak leads a bull by the horns, followed by other soldiers and elephants with shields tied to their sides.

He is meeting with a grey-haired, bearded elderly man wearing a ceremonial white tunic and mantle, accompanied by young men with sheathed swords, also in ceremonial clothes.

It's thought the warrior in the rare non-Biblical scene is Alexander the Great becaise of a procession of elephants (pictured). But Professor Magness said the identification of the figures in this mosaic is unclear because there are no stories in the Hebrew Bible involving elephants

Professor Magness said the identification of the figures in this mosaic is unclear because there are no stories in the Hebrew Bible involving elephants.

‘Battle elephants were associated with Greek armies beginning with Alexander the Great, so this might be a depiction of a Jewish legend about the meeting between Alexander and the Jewish high priest,’ she said.

‘Different versions of this story appear in the writings of Flavius Josephus and in rabbinic literature.’

HT Sarah Veale at Invocatio.

Josephus indeed tells a story about Alexander the Great meeting the Jewish High Priest, whom he had seen beforehand in a dream. In this story, the High Priest showed Alexander the biblical book of Daniel and Alexander, believing (correctly) that some of the oracles in the book were about him, was very pleased. It's a nice story (which you can read here along with some Livius commentary), but it's the sort of thing that someone would have come up with whether it happened or not, and there are historical problems. Not least of these, of course, is that the book of Daniel had not yet been written in Alexander's time.

Naturally, the historicity or not of the story has no bearing on whether it is depicted on this late-antique mosaic.

I don't know anything about the rabbinic versions of the story, so I won't try to comment on them here.

Background on Huqoq and its mosaics is here and many links.

UPDATE: Thanks to the readers who sent me the Talmudic reference b. Yoma 69a, which tells the story of Alexander's meeting with the High Priest Simon the Just. You can read a translation of the passage in a book edited by Lawrence Schiffman here. The passage by Josephus (Antiquities 11.321-47) is translated immediately before it.

The courtesan story has jumped the shark

FUNERARY SPELUNIC ARCHAEOLOGY SENSATIONALISM: It is entertaining to watch the evolution of the headlines about the recently-discovered cave-tomb in Israel whose contents may have belonged to a hetaira courtesan. I noted the story here and here. The headline to the first story, by i24 News:

"Archeologists 'for first time' unearth tomb of Ancient Greek hetaira courtesan."

Sounds pretty confident she was a courtesan, but otherwise cautious.

The second headline, by Haaretz:

"Israeli Archaeologists May Have Found First-ever Grave of Hetaira From Time of Alexander the Great."

A little more cautious. She may be a hetaira. Also more informative, giving an approximate date connected to a well-known historical figure. (Alexander's career was in the late fourth century.) The archaeologists date the tomb to the fourth-third century BCE. But wait. Bringing in Alexander could have unintended consequences.

From a few days ago, a Live Science headline by Sascha Pare:

2,300-year-old grave in Israel contains remains of Greek courtesan who may have accompanied Alexander the Great's army.

Not only is she from the time of Alexander, she may have accompanied his army? Sure, maybe. There are various other possibilities. She may have died in the early third century, long after Alexander.

Then today, in the headline of an unattributed article in Neos Kosmos:

2,300 year old tomb found in Israel with potential link to Alexander the Great.

Note the subtle shift. Our possible courtesan may have had a link to Alexander himself, not just his army. Intriguing. How close a connection? It is true that the subheading does clarify that a connection to his army is meant. But people tend to absorb and click on headlines.

Finally, the headline of an article by Michael Havis in the Daily Mail dated yesterday goes full clickbait:

Is this Alexander the Great's escort? Tomb of a courtesan who may have seduced the Macedonian king is discovered after 2,300 years.

Our possible hetaira courtesan who may have lived in the late fourth century and may have accompanied Alexander's army now may have actually been Alexander the Great's lover!

To be clear, the content of the articles is about the same. The actual story is that archaeologists found a cave-tomb near Jerusalem dating to the late fourth/early third century BCE which contained cremated remains and a cool bronze box-mirror. Everything else is inference, speculation, and, finally, wild speculation.

The lesson: assume that media headlines sensationalize any story, sometimes beyond recognition, to get you to click on that link. Do not assume you have accurate knowledge about the story until you read it in full, carefully, and—if possible—you compare it to coverage in a couple of other articles.

You're welcome.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

SPEAKING OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, here's a review of two new books about him, a novel and a history:

Authors offer new look at Alexander the Great

By David Walton
FOR THE [PITTSBURG] TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, November 14, 2004

"The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great," by Steven Pressfield; Doubleday, $24.95, 301 pages, and "Alexander the Great: A New Life," by Paul Cartledge; Overlook Press, $28.95, 347 pages.

Novelist Steven Pressfield says he "looted shamelessly" writers ancient and recent for "The Virtues of War," his fictional re-creation of the military career of Alexander the Great.

Surprisingly, new information continues to turn up about Alexander, who fought and died three centuries before the birth of Christ, Caesar and the Roman Empire. Satellite photography and computer technology have made possible detailed reconstructions of battlefields, weaponry and battle tactics, confirming and correcting ancient legend and historiography. These past 20 years have been an exciting time for classical archaeology -- a subject almost nobody is interested in anymore.

Pressfield's device is to let Alexander tell his own story. "I have always been a soldier," he begins . . .

In the string of excellent new histories over the last decade, the most readable and engrossing is Paul Cartledge's "Alexander the Great: A New Life," just published. Cartledge, the world's leading historian on Sparta and ancient Greece, adapted his book from his Cambridge University lectures over the past 20 years. His approach is immediate, discursive, insightful, and highly engaging, aimed at the audience for the BBC-PBS series on the Spartans and Greek civilization that Cartledge has written and advised.

Cartledge looks at Alexander's "extraordinary achievement" not only for what he accomplished in his own time, but for its "subsequent impact" -- which continues to this day, when Alexander is still prayed in aid by fishermen in Greece, cursed as a thief in Iran, and worshipped as a saint in the Coptic Church of Egypt.

[...]

Boardman, Alexander the Great

NEW BOOK FROM PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Alexander the Great
From His Death to the Present Day

John Boardman

Editions
Hardcover 2019 29.95 24.00 ISBN9780691181752 176 pp. 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 8 page color + 36 b/w illus.
E-book ISBN9780691184043

An illustrious scholar presents an elegant, concise, and generously illustrated exploration of Alexander the Great’s representations in art and literature through the ages

John Boardman is one of the world’s leading authorities on ancient Greece, and his acclaimed books command a broad readership. In this book, he looks beyond the life of Alexander the Great in order to examine the astonishing range of Alexanders created by generations of authors, historians, and artists throughout the world—from Scotland to China.

Alexander’s defeat of the Persian Empire in 331 BC captured the popular imagination, inspiring an endless series of stories and representations that emerged shortly after his death and continues today. An art historian and archaeologist, Boardman draws on his deep knowledge of Alexander and the ancient world to reflect on the most interesting and emblematic depictions of this towering historical figure.

Some of the stories in this book relate to historical events associated with Alexander’s military career and some to the fantasy that has been woven around him, and Boardman relates each with his customary verve and erudition. From Alexander’s biographers in ancient Greece to the illustrated Alexander “Romances” of the Middle Ages to operas, films, and even modern cartoons, this generously illustrated volume takes readers on a fascinating cultural journey as it delivers a perfect pairing of subject and author.

You can read the Introduction to the book at the link.

Some past PaleoJudaica posts on Alexander the Great are collected here. Alexander had a creative reception in Jewish tradition, notably in the Book of Daniel, Josephus, and one recension of the Alexander Romance.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

The Daily Mail meets the Septuagint

THE SEPTUAGINT is mentioned in the Daily Mail, which is impressive, even though it predictably gets it wrong. This in a somewhat overly enthusiastic article about Alexander the Great and Alexandria.

The father of civilisation: Alexander the Great's hunger for knowledge gave us everything from the Old Testament to algebra and even robots

By Bettany Hughes

Last updated at 8:50 AM on 26th March 2010

There is not, and has never been, another city to match it. It was a glittering metropolis, home to the most sexually charismatic queen of all time, founded by a man whose megalomaniac ambitions knew no bounds.

It was a buzzing hub that boasted one of the seven wonders of the world, where intellectual geniuses from both East and West met to tussle and debate in a library containing all the knowledge on the planet.

Founded more than 2,300 years ago, and in its hey-day one of the most powerful places in the world, this is now a lost city, most of it buried beneath waves off the coast of modern Egypt.
Alexander the Great: The Greek leader made Alexandria a place of knowledge, discovery and sexual intrigues

Alexander the Great: The Greek leader made Alexandria a place of knowledge, discovery and sexual intrigues

This is the city of Alexandria. By rights, Alexandria should be a household name, as famous as Athens or Rome. Make no mistake, this was a metropolis as beautiful as Paris, as creative as London, as hip as New York and more learned than Harvard.

And yet, as I discovered while researching a new documentary, somehow this amazing urban experiment is just a footnote in history.

[...]

The mention of the Septuagint is here:

Soon after, Euclid devised the system of geometry that still torments our schoolchildren today. This was also where the Old Testament was preserved for future generations.

It was said that 72 of the best scholars who spoke both Hebrew and Greek worked for 72 days in 72 separate cells to translate the old testament texts into Greek.

Their efforts - named then and today 'the Septuagint' - were not wasted. The Old Testament only survives into the 21st-century thanks to the men of Alexandria in the 2nd-century BC.

This basic story is found in the Letter to Aristeas. Aristeas is itself legendary, but the business about the 72 different cells is a still later improvement of the story. See here for more. The Pentateuch does seem to have been translated in Alexandria in the third (not second) century BCE, with the translation of the other books of the Hebrew Bible coming over the next couple of centuries, with revisions continuing after that.

The business about the Old Testament surviving only "thanks to the men of Alexandria" is, of course, nonsense. The Hebrew text was transmitted quite independently of them.

As for this:

From the death of Hypatia onwards, rival factions battled for control of the city. In 641 AD, as Arab forces swept along the coast, what was left of Alexandria's great libraries were burnt in a whirlwind of battle fires.

The story that Muslim fanatics burned down the Library of Alexandria keeps getting repeated, but the sources for it are late and unreliable. See here and follow the link at the end.

I'm looking forward to seeing Rachel Weisz as Hypatia.

Search engine referrals

IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN, and PaleoJudaica has lots of new search engine referrals from the last year to share. As usual, I swear that I have not made any of these up, and I have done a little censoring to preserve PaleoJudaica family values. The material in parentheses are my own commentary. This year I have grouped the searches thematically and under broad categories for easy reference.

HISTORY AND LITERATURE
• east anglian daily times beyond 2000bc
  
• the great mother
  
• klasicisms
  
• amazon-warriors.com
  
• alexander the great's mother in bed
  
• alexander the great's mom and dad
  
• alexander the great death wish
  
• alexander the great's body
  
• alexander the great dead body
  
• phoenician judaism
  
• old testament gaint og
  
• dead sea scrolls enema instructions (eew!)
  
• essenes enemas
  
• josephus giant bones on display in
  
• 2005 c-130 giant nephilim skeleton
  
• strange menorahs
  
• fishman becoming people talmud (sounds more like Lovecraft)
  
• "the talmud and other diet books"
  
• a king james version bavil
  
• rashi on 12/11/12 at 7 pm
  
• "holy prepuce" circumcision jesus christ
  
• "crucifixion postures" (used in pilates?)
  
• the latest report on the ist century mark man
  
• greek translation of revelation (translation?)
  
• news scriptdoomsday relates to the book of revelation
  
• ancient spiritual gnosis texts for beginners gnosis
  
• configurations of the fate of heaven beneath the twelve (not a video game)
  
• configuration of the fate of heaven that ...
  
• is codex sinaiticus is fake (short answer, no)
  
• 1-7-13 mystic, john dee
  
  PHILOLOGY
  
• cuneiform numbers 1-10
  
• "lifeless water" akkadian
  
• paleo hebrew name for adam
  
• paleo tetragrammaton ring
  
• book of enoch bangla translation
  
• aramaic popular in 2012
  
• syriac for thirsty
  
• chaldeans spoke quenya language
  
• she flies with her own wings in amharic (and you should see what she can do in Ge'ez!)
  
• roman numeral 08-16-2009
  
  SCHOLARSHIP
  
• british new testament conference whisky room
  
• mystical book reviews blog
  
  CELEBRITIES
  
• angelina jolie stretch marks
  
• angelina jolie без грим (means "without makeup" in Russian; appeared repeatedly)
  
• lara croft angelina jolie hot (again, repeatedly)
  
• angelina jolie breast augmentation
  
• monica bellutchi
  
• monica bellucci at 20 years old
  
• "intertextuality * life of brian" (well, why not?)
  
• singer madonna carthage must be destroyed (new hit!)
  
• jim davila wood carver (not me)
  
• jimmy davila art teacher, az (not me)
  
• never see the day with james davila (not me?)
  
• james davila blot (me?)
  
• davila paleo (not the diet)
  
• paleodudaica (Dude!)
  
• pleojudaica
  
  TATTOOS
  
• complete metatron's cube tattoos
  
• metatrons cube tattoo
  
• tatoo papyroi
  
  MISCELLANEOUS
  
• human got bitten by lion (not Daniel, presumably)
  
• man jump on lion dan into bronx zoo (probably the guy who got bitten)
  
• jesus will save you picture
  
• criteria for interpretatvie dance contest
  
• j mark iwry married to darryl
  
• "on the matter of the man with three wives"
  
• orgasm interview
  
• 10-11 age real dangle gold earrings in toronto
  
• annezimmermann fotos 2012 (makeup again!)
  
• historic importance of 11-11-11-18
  
• k.i.blue ridge cemetary hours open
  
• published: sunday, march. 22, 2009- 12:00am
  
• nuclear medicine physicians @talktalk.net
  
• professors in surgeons @talktalk.net

Review of Ogden (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Alexander the Great

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: The Cambridge companion to Alexander the Great.

Daniel Ogden, The Cambridge companion to Alexander the Great. Cambridge companions to the ancient world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. 612. ISBN 9781108840996.

Review by
K. R. Moore, Teesside University. K.R.Moore@tees.ac.uk

... It is worth emphasising that none of the burgeoning scholarship on Alexander the Great is redundant or excessive. All of it adds to our highly imperfect understanding of the Macedonian Conqueror and his legacy. And so it is with this preamble in mind that we now turn to the contents of this most recent Companion to join the marching ranks of its noble predecessors. ...

PaleoJudaica notes in particular these chapters:

28. The Alexander Romance, Christian Thrue Djurslev
29. Alexander in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, Aleksandra Klęczar

For many posts on Alexander the Great and his connection with ancient Jewish traditions, notably in the Alexander Romance, see here and links. For some other books on Alexander and the Alexander tradition published in recent years, see here, here, here, here, here, here (reprint of an old book), here, and here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Alexander the Great in Jerusalem?

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: Alexander the Great in Jerusalem (Ory Amitay).

But did Alexander the Great visit Jerusalem, or didn’t he? That is the single most frequently asked question when people hear the title of my new book, Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth & History. It is encouraging in our day and age that people still care about facts. The truth of the matter is, however, that there is really no way to tell. After more than 20 years of studying the evidence, my answer to this basic question is a definite maybe.

That's a good answer.

Regarding the book:

Either way, a much more important question for me — indeed, it stands at the heart of my book — is not what happened when Alexander passed through the Levant, but rather what it was that generations of Judean storytellers intended when they made up stories about Alexander in Jerusalem that were clearly fictional. These fictions are themselves historical facts, and they each contain their storyteller’s assumptions and agenda. Methodologically, my point of attack lies with the alternative facts presented by each story. By considering these fictive factoids together with each story’s tendencies and attitudes, I attempt to offer a historical context for each of the four stories studied in the book.

I noted the publication of the book here. And for many PaleoJudaica posts on Alexander the Great and his connection with ancient Jewish traditions, follow the links from there.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Kleczar, Ha-Makdoni, Images of Alexander the Great ...

NEW BOOK FROM ARCHEOBOOKS:

Ha-Makdoni, Images of Alexander the Great in Ancient and Medieval Jewish Literature

25,00 $
ISBN: 978-83-65080-98-1
Description: softcover, 184 pages (24x17)
Condition: new
Weight: 295g.

Aleksandra Kleczar, Ha-Makdoni, Images of Alexander the Great in Ancient and Medieval Jewish Literature, Krakow 2019

Alexander the Great is an unexpected yet important hero of a number of ancient and medieval Jewish narratives. He appears in historical works, prophecies, moralizing parables and in a number of fantastic stories retelling his life and deeds. These legends were in circulation very early on: the earliest written accounts on Alexander in Jewish tradition are older than the ones preserved from the Greco-Roman world.
This book is devoted to the analysis of the image of Alexander in Jewish literature. By tracing his image as an exemplary foreign king, a leader chosen by God, an object of moral critique and a traveller in far, imagined lands we can shed some light on a number of interesting features of Jewish-Graeco-Roman cultural exchange. The book should be of interest for those studying Jewish culture and classical reception as well as scholars dealing with the development of the legendary image of Alexander the Great.

I noted a few recent books on related themes here, here and here. Follow the links from those posts for many other posts on Alexander. And for past posts on the Alexander Romance, one recension of which connects Alexander to Jewish traditions, see here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

A lost history of the Diadochoi being recovered?

ALGORITHM WATCH: AI is deciphering a 2,000-year-old 'lost book' describing life after Alexander the Great. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, it carbonized a book on rulers who followed Alexander the Great. Now, machine learning is deciphering the "lost book" (Owen Jarus, Live Science). HT Rogue Classicism.

Only small parts of the heavily damaged text can be read right now. "It contains the names of a number of Macedonian dynasts and generals of Alexander," Janko said, noting that it also includes "several mentions of Alexander himself." After Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C., his empire fell apart. The text mentions the Macedonian generals Seleucus, who came to rule a large amount of territory in the Middle East, and Cassander, who ruled Greece after Alexander's death.

The lost book is from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, a city that was destroyed alongside Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted after the turn of the first millennium. ...

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and its destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, start here and follow the links. For the works of the Philosopher Philodemus and other works recovered from the carbonized library at Herculaneum, see here and here and links. For posts on the work of Dr. Brent Seales on recovering the text of the Herculaneum scrolls and other ancient documents, see here and links.

For many posts on Alexander the Great and his connection with ancient Jewish traditions, notably in the Alexander Romance, see here and links. Some posts on the Diadochoi (Alexander's generals who took over after him) and their successors are collected here.

Cross-file under Lost Books.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Tibetan bowl: a circumcised Alexander at the Tree of Life?

ICONOGRAPHY: Ancient Bowl From Tibet Shows Alexander the Great – the Jewish Version. That’s not Homer: Jews on the Silk Road came up with their own ‘Alexander Romance’ in which the boy king reached Paradise, which required a certain surgical procedure (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

And there you have it. A beautiful young man with classic artistic hallmarks of the young conqueror plus a very clearly circumcised penis, among incense trees, attended by servants. If Dan and Grenet are right about the identification of the iconic man on the bowl and about its origin, then this bowl – a “unique visual representation” of Alexander’s legend in the Jewish context – is also the earliest attestation of the Alexander Romance in the Indo-Iranian world, Grenet says.

The bowl was manufactured at the time of the Sassanian (aka Neo-Persian) Empire, which ruled from the year 224 to 651 C.E, in its eastern regions, which were already dominated by the Huns called “Hephtalites” who occupied Central Asia between 457 and 565 C.E.

The earliest manuscript of the Alexander Romance does date to the third century CE, but its composition may have been much earlier. Richard Stoneman, the foremost expert on the work, thinks the original, rather pedestrian, historical version was composed before 300 BCE, within a few decades of Alexander's death. The second and then third recensions evolved over many centuries and are progressively more entertaining and outlandish.

PaleoJudaica has many posts on the Alexander Romance. Start here and follow the links. If you like entertaining ancient literature, it is worth a read:

Richard Stoneman, The Greek Alexander Romance (Penguin, 1991)

For additional PaleoJudaica posts on the historical and legendary Alexander the Great, see here and many links.

The connections between the Tibetan bowl and the Alexander Romance are indirect. The direct connections appear in the Babylonian Talmud and in the Sefer Toldot Alexandros ha-Makdoni (according to the Haaretz article - I haven't checked them). But in the Alexander Romance you can read the accounts of his visit to the Land of the Blessed, where he found the spring of immortality but failed to drink from it, in II.39, and of his visit to the oracle in the Indian city of the Sun in II.44.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Budge, The History of Alexander the Great

CLASSIC REPRINT FROM CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS:

The History of Alexander the Great
Being the Syriac Version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes

EDITOR AND TRANSLATOR: Ernest A. Wallis Budge
DATE PUBLISHED: July 2013
AVAILABILITY: Available
FORMAT: PaperbackISBN: 9781107631175

Originally published in 1889, this book by the highly esteemed Orientalist Ernest Wallis Budge is an edition of the Syriac version of the text by Pseudo-Callisthenes on the life of Alexander the Great, one of the earliest histories of the great Macedonian general. Also included are a brief biography of Alexander, an assessment of the varying versions of the Alexander story, and a copy of the Syriac source text with scholarly footnotes and comparisons among the various manuscripts. This book will be of value to Syriac students, Classicists and anyone with an interest in the confluence of East and West in the ancient world.

I guess this has been out for a while, but it's the first time it popped up in my morning searches.

This version is a translation of a version of the Alexander Romance, on which more here (especially) and here and links. And for many other posts on Alexander and on his connection with ancient Jewish traditions, start here (cf. here) and follow the links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Huqoq mosaic published

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: Explore This Mysterious Mosaic—It May Portray Alexander the Great. A decorated floor uncovered in the buried ruins of an ancient synagogue in Israel may depict a legendary meeting with the famous conqueror (A. R. Williams).

After several years of digging and study, archaeologists are revealing an extraordinary—and enigmatic—mosaic discovered among the ruins of a Roman-era synagogue at a site in Israel known as Huqoq. Nothing like it has come to light in any other building yet known from the ancient world, experts say.

The scene includes elephants outfitted for battle—a detail that immediately suggests the story of the Maccabees, Judean leaders who mounted a revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the mid-second century B.C. The Seleucids, who were descendants of one of Alexander the Great’s generals, are famed for including elephants in their armies.

But excavation director Jodi Magness, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has a different interpretation. She believes the leader of the army is none other than Alexander the Great himself. His meeting with the high priest of Jerusalem never happened, but it was a piece of historical fiction that would have been very familiar to the residents of ancient Huqoq. ...

[...]

It's hard enough to interpret ancient inscriptions, but interpreting ancient uninscribed decorative art is a whole other level of challenge. In this case other specialists have a completely different interpretation of the mosaic:

[Karen] Britt, the art historian, agrees with Magness that the mosaic tells a story that would have held great meaning for ancient synagogue-goers. But she has come up with a different theory about what that story might be—a situation that’s not unusual as members of a research project consider the evidence from different points of view.

Britt and Ra’anan Boustan, a UCLA history of religion specialist who’s also [like Britt] a member of the excavation team, have spent the past two years consulting ancient literature, considering scenes of similar figures in ancient art, and visiting the ruins of synagogues around the Sea of Galilee.

They interpret the mosaic as the depiction of a Seleucid attack on Jerusalem led by King Antiochus VII (pronounced an-TIE-oh-cuss) in 132 B.C.

[...]

I've heard that at least one peer-review publication on the mosaic is coming, and doubtless there will be more. Meanwhile, this article provides a good photo that specialists can start working on:

“I think you could make the case for a number of different interpretations,” says Magness. With the mosaic now revealed, and the likely possibilities outlined, she expects the debates to begin.

Background on this particular mosaic from Huqoq is here and here. Follow the background links for some of the other ancient mosaics that have been found at the same site. And for a more recently discovered mosaic, again at Huqoq, see here.

Alexander the God?

SACRED ARCHITECTURE: Ancient Temple Discovered in Iraq Dedicated to Alexander the Great (Tasos Kokkinidis, Greek Reporter).

Archaeologists uncovered signs that Alexander the Great was worshipped as a divine figure in an ancient temple in Iraq.

Scientists had been puzzled by the discovery of more recent Greek inscriptions at the ancient Sumerian temple of Girsu, in the modern-day town of Tello.

Now, British Museum archaeologists believe a Greek temple to Alexander the Great was founded on the site, possibly by Alexander himself.

[...]

Not directly relevant to ancient Judaism, but Alexander is an important figure in Jewish tradition and I like to keep track of what's going on with him.

The argument that Alexander was worshipped jointly with Zeus and (as his brother) Heracles/Ningursu, is plausible, but involves a good bit of inference. It does cohere with Egyptian traditions that deify him.

For many posts on Alexander the Great and his connection with ancient Jewish traditions, notably in the Alexander Romance, see here and links, plus (more or less) here and (sort of) here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

SPEAKING OF HISTORICAL REVISIONISM, David Bernstein over at the Volokh Conspiracy draws attention to the Egyptian State Information Service's web page on "Jerusalem in history", which has many wild, tendentious, historical errors. I doubt that I've caught all of them, but here are some.

Historical facts prove that Jerusalem has witnessed Arab urban and human stability since the year 3000 BC. In 2500 BC, Arab Jebusites, descendants of the Jebusite Ben Canaan, made the City their capital and called it Orsalem, from which the Europeans derived Jerusalem, which means the City of Light.

The "Jebusites" are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as one of the pre-Israelite peoples in the land. The word may be an Amorite name. The Amorites, for whatever it's worth, spoke Northwest Semitic dialects related to Hebrew, not Southern Semitic Arabic. The Bible associates the Jebusites with Jerusalem and give pre-Israelite names of kings of Jerusalem as Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18) and Adoni-zedek (Joshua 10:1-4), again, West Semitic names, not Arabic ones. In any case, we are deep in the realm of legend here and we cannot say with any confidence what the ethnic background of the Jebusites was. There is no positive evidence of their being Arabs and such evidence as we have indicates that they were not.

The etymology of the name "Jerusalem" is not very clear, but it doesn't mean "City of Light." It looks like a West Semitic name (again, related to Hebrew but not Arabic), perhaps meaning "foundation of (the god) Shalim" or some such.

The Chaldean King Nebuchadnezzar expelled the Jews from the two kingdoms. In 580 BC, he destroyed the City, burned the Temple and expatriated the Jews to Babylon in Iraq.

Since then, namely 600 years BC, the political history of the Jews had ended in Palestine.

Actually Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem was in 586/87 BCE, but let's not quibble. The last sentence is misleading. It is true that from this point on Judea was almost always under foreign rule, but there remained a large Jewish population in Palestine with a considerable political presence. Note that this section entirely ignores the second temple, which stood in Jerusalem between about 520 BCE and 70 CE.

In 232 BC., Alexander the Great invaded Palestine and annexed it to the Greek Empire. Afterwards, Mark Antonio reinvaded it in 189 BC. Then came the Nabataean Arabs to invade it in 90 BC as was annexed to their capital till the Roman invasion in the 1st. Century AD.

Alexander the Great's dates are 356-323 BCE. Mark Antony's are c. 83-30 BCE. The Nabatean King Obodas I defeated Alexander Jannaeus in 90 BCE and took territory from him (Moab and Gilead) but he did not annex Palestine.

Under the Roman reign, the Jews informed the Roman ruler about Jesus Christ in 27 AD and accused him of atheism. Consequently, the Roman ruler crushed them all and destroyed the City and established a new one where the Jews were inhibited to enter.

The causes of the Jewish revolt against Rome in 66-70 CE are complex, but the issues did not have to do with Jesus.

1- Excavations under the western wall (the base of the so-called Wailing Wall) proved nothing related to the Israelis. All What they found were only two sentences on some rocks about Isaiah engraved in type of writing that makes attributing them to Kings David or Solomon impossible.

This is so garbled that I'm not at all sure what it is supposed to mean. I am not aware of any inscriptions found under the Western Wall or which mention Isaiah. A Hebrew inscription from Silwan village from roughly the time of Isaiah comes from a tomb that may be mentioned in Isaiah 22:15-16. That and the Siloam tunnel inscription (cf. here) do demonstrate that the people living in Jerusalem and its vicinity c. 700 BCE spoke Hebrew and engaged in substantial public works in the city.

2- Excavations proved that the Jewish temple had been totally ruined thousands of years ago. This was clearly cited in the relevant Jewish references. Dr. Cathleen Cabinpus, Director of Excavations in the Jerusalem-based School for Monuments, affirmed that there was no trace of the Temple of Solomon.

Yes, the Jewish (second) temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, pretty close to 2000 years ago. I am not sure what that is supposed to prove. It was there for centuries. And yes, no archaeological remains of the first temple have been found, but given Herod's extensive rebuilding and expansion of the Temple Platform, the remains of the first temple may have been virtually entirely removed in his time. In any case, given the lack of access to the site by archaeologists and the deliberate destruction wreaked upon it by the Palestinian Authority, there hasn't been much opportunity to check. The recent salvage operation (follow the last link) has found material culture (including Hebrew inscriptions) from both the first and second temple periods.

4- There is no historical evidence that Al Bouraq Wall, the so-called Wailing Wall, was part of the Temple of Solomon. Besides, the real name of this wall is Al Bouraq Wall as mentioned by Prophet Mohammed, PBUH in his Hadith (speech) about his journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and his Ascension to seventh heavens.

Whatever one calls it, the "Wailing Wall" is part of the Temple Platform built by Herod the Great, not Solomon (no one claims it is Solomonic), and clearly dates to the Herodian period (around the turn of the era -- 2000 years ago). Herod's work, particularly on the temple, is mentioned frequently in contemporary literature. There was no such massive construction project on the Temple Mount in the Islamic period.

Now let us be clear: this is a website published by the Egyptian Government. It is riddled with both tendentious and simply careless errors about the history of Jerusalem. If this is what they come up with on matters about which I know something, I'm not inclined to assume that anything else they say is reliable.

UPDATE (28 May): Reader Gary Greenberg e-mails:

In your comment on the Egyptian Government's lies about Jerusalem, you might have noted in response that the Maccabees ruled an independent Jewish empire about as large as David's for about a century prior to the Roman conquest.

Yes, that's another one. You can read more about the Hasmonean dynasty (142-63 BCE) here and here. Also, an independent Jewish goverment was declared during the Bar Kokhba revolt (132-135 CE), but although the revolutionaries controlled much of the countryside, they appear not to have gained control of Jerusalem, and the Romans put the revolt down after a few years.

UPDATE (2 June): An article in the Forward gives some Egyptian political context for this sort of thing: "Report Slams Egypt Over Antisemitism."

UPDATE (1 July): Greetings, History Carnival XI readers. You may also be interested in reading my recent article, "Assimilated to the Blogosphere: Blogging Ancient Judaism."

Review of Monerie, L'économie de la Babylonie à l'époque hellénistique

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Julien Monerie, L'économie de la Babylonie à l'époque hellénistique. Studies in Ancient Near Eastern records, 14​. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. Pp. xvii, 577. ISBN 9781501510670. €189,95. Reviewed by R.J. van der Spek, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (robartus.vanderspek@gmail.com).

In the past, the arrival of Alexander the Great has been seen as a deep rupture in the history of Greece as well as in the history of the Near East. In Greece it would have marked the end of the independent city-state, in the Near East the end of the former Mesopotamian civilizations. Most textbooks on the history of the Near East end with Alexander the Great. In a more recent past this picture has changed. It was observed that Alexander the Great left many institutions unchanged and the Seleucid empire was considered a direct successor to the former Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian empires. Monerie correctly takes now a more nuanced stance. Although there is a lot of continuity, changes are considerable. Monerie points to the introduction of money, the foundation of many cities and the political innovations in existing cities, the shift of the gravity of Babylonia from the Euphrates (Babylon) to the Tigris and Diyala area (Seleucia); the gradual weakening of the temples; the reduction of royal domain in favor of cities.

I noted the publication of the book here.

I am glad to see that good use is increasing being made of the many thousands of economic cuneiform tablets. They are boring individually, but collectively they have much to tell us about ancient Mesopotamian society in all periods.

Likewise, the neglected history of Babylonia in the Persian and Hellenistic periods has been receiving increasing interest from scholars. This book is another example. For some past posts, see here and links. This history is of no little interest for Judaism of the Second Temple Period.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Ancient figures associated with Tyre

A ROLL CALL of ancient classical and biblical figures associated with the Phoenician city of Tyre appears in an American Spectator travel piece:

With its expensive purple dye made from a local mollusk, the murex, Tyre was the center for the Versaces and Givenchys of the ancient world. Paris took Helen of Troy here on a shopping expedition to drape in sumptuous fabric the frame and face that launched a thousand ships.

King Hiram of Tyre was an ally and trading partner of Jerusalem's King Solomon. Hiram sold Solomon the cedar timber for the great Temple.

The Jerusalem-Tyre relationship was rocky then as now. The old Hebrew prophets inveighed against the wealthy city and its neighbor, Sidon, as hotbeds of heathenism and vice. Jezebel, a Tyrian princess (and Dido's great-aunt) who married Israel's King Ahab, came to an unhappy end.

Egypt's pharaohs many times made war against Tyre. Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar battered Tyre in the 6th century B.C. Some 250 years later, Alexander the Great already had established effective mastery over the entire Levant when he demanded to offer sacrifice at Tyre to its principal god, Melqart. Alexander maintained that he himself was divine because, he said, he was a descendant of divine Herakles, of whom Melqart was only an avatar. The Tyrians didn't cotton to that.

When diplomacy failed, Alexander mounted a costly siege whose success resulted in the slaughter of thousands of Tyrians, deportation into slavery for the survivors, and ruin of the splendid city. Modern historians say there was no strategic rationale for Alexander's destruction of Tyre and its people. The impulse for the genocide was something like the rage of a deranged, spurned lover. Is "education" the answer to war and the world's other problems? Consider that the Macedonian sociopath had for his personal tutor the serene and rational Stagirite who wrote the Nicomachean Ethics.

When Jesus walked up the short road from Galilee to Tyre, preaching to the people and driving a demon out of a local woman's daughter, he saw what Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander had done to the place, fulfilling the prophecies of, inter alia, Amos, Ezekiel, Zechariah and Jeremiah. He instructed his disciples to say to Galilean towns that rejected them and their preaching: "It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment, than for thee."

Tyre, its glories, and its devastations have inspired much English-language poetry, not all of it great. The shakiest entry in the Shakespeare canon is Pericles: Prince of Tyre, a weak work slapped together in a regrettable collaboration between the Bard and some London hacks from a mediaeval tear-jerker, Apollonius of Tyre. The Gnostic Necromancer Simon Magus and his paramour Helen of Tyre, who lived just after the time of Jesus, are themselves the figures of fascinating legend. Longfellow was obsessed with Tyre, but being no Dante with Paolo and Francesca, he spoiled the story of Simon and Helen in a tedium of moralistic stanzas -- "pious gurglings," as Mencken put it.

ALEXANDER THE NOT-SO-GREAT?

How great was Alexander? (UCBerkeleyNews)

By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 12 June 2003

BERKELEY � Alexander the Great may not have been so great after all.

A University of California, Berkeley-led group of researchers is challenging the common history that credits the Macedonian king with initiating the spread of ancient Greek culture throughout the Middle East during his conquest of the region during the 4th century B.C.

Backed by a nearly $234,000 collaborative research grant from the Getty Foundation, the team over the next two years will try to document a thriving Hellenized culture in the city of Dor, Israel, at least 100 years before Alexander marched in.

The birth of the Hellenistic period, when Greek culture began to spread far beyond its native territory, has long been set around 334 B.C. to 323 B.C., when Alexander and his troops began their 20,000-mile conquest, thundering from Macedonia south through what is now Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt. The troops then set off for Persia and India.

"Our hunch is that at Dor, Hellenization - the wholesale importation of Greek material culture - begins in the 5th century B.C. and goes into high gear around about 400 B.C. So, it precedes Alexander," said Andrew Stewart, a UC Berkeley professor of art history and classics in the College of Letters & Science. He also is the project's principal investigator.

"There is, as far as we can tell, no boost given to this process by Alexander's conquests," said Stewart. "So, immediately we are challenging the view that it was Alexander who principally spread Greek culture throughout the Middle East."

[�]

The researchers will investigate what has been uncovered that reflects the efforts of inhabitants of Dor in adopting Greek culture, resisting it, or combining it with their own to form something new. They will look at these interactions in terms of material culture at various levels of society, throughout time.

[�]

Nawotka et al. (eds), The Historiography of Alexander the Great

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: The Historiography of Alexander the Great. Notice of a New Book: Nawotka, Krzysztof, Robert Rollinger, Josef Wiesehöfer & Agnieszka Wojciechowska (eds.). 2019. The Historiography of Alexander the Great (Classica et Orientalia 20). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

This book deals with the vexed problem of isolating early sources for the life of Alexander, important because our main sources for his life come from centuries after his time, but used material written by his contemporaries. The book also has essays dealing with ancient Jewish traditions about Alexander.

For more on Alexander the Great and on his reception in Judaism, see here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.