Alexander the Great

By a present, then, the temple staff had been forewarned and the natives would have led Alexander through their houses at the foot of the citadel and set him on the steps to the temple, traces of which can still be seen. With his friends, he would have climbed up to the pedimented gate of the outer temple yard; at the entrance, or just inside the first court, the senior priest came forward, greeting the king in full hearing of his followers. He was aware of his visitor's high rank, as he allowed nobody but Alexander to enter the i

'The oracles were not given in spoken words as at Delphi or Miletus,' wrote Callisthenes, repeating what Alexander wished to be known, 'but for the most part they were given by nods and tokens, just as in Homer, "Zeus the son of Cronos spoke and nodded with his dark eyebrows"; the priest would then answer on Zeus's behalf.' This publicity has much to tell. There are four ways to treat foreign gods: fight them, disbelieve them, accept them or identify them with one's own at home. At Siwah Alexander chose identification, just as the Athenians and other Greeks had long paid worship to Ammon by a link with their own Zeus. It is a tribute to Callisthenes's tact, and an insight into his patron's tastes, that for the new Achilles the god's procedure was explained by a reference to Zeus in Homer's Iliad.

As for the nods and tokens, they match all that is known about the workings of an Egyptian oracle. Like the Greeks and Romans, the Egyptians imagined their gods in terms of the society in which they lived; just as Christ in the Roman Empire was to be hedged about with the protocol of a Roman emperor, so the lord god Amun was thought to behave in the ma

This apparatus would have startled Alexander, and its giving of oracles was suitably eccentric. In Egyptian ritual, the questioner might read out his problem to the god, or write it in simple form on a potsherd token, or tell it first to the priest who would then repeat it to the boat. The bearers would heave the sacred vessel on to their shoulders and prepare to move like table-turners in whichever direction they felt it pressing them. If the god meant 'no', he would force the boat-bearers backwards; if he meant 'yes', he would force them forwards; if he lost his temper at the question, he would shake furiously from side to side. The priest would interpret his movements, 'answering on behalf of Zeus'; written questions could also be laid out on the ground in alternative versions of 'yes' and 'no' so that the god could lunge towards whichever answer he fancied. This ritual lasted in Egypt for two thousand years, until the coming of Islam, and it still has a parallel in certain African tribes; just as Sheikhs in their coffins have sometimes weighed heavily on their pall-bearers to stop their body being taken to its funeral, so in the Sudan, worshippers are still driven to and fro by the momentum of a holy image on their shoulders.

At Siwah nods and tokens were only given 'for the most part', and so Alexander also went through the boat's small courtyard and entered the holiest shrine behind, a small room about ten foot wide and twenty foot long which was roofed over with the trunks of palm trees. In this sacred chamber he could put his questions direct to the god, a privilege that was perhaps reserved for Pharaohs and rulers only; he would not be aware that a narrow passage, still visible on the site of the temple, ran behind the righthand wall and was linked to the shrine by a series of small holes. Here, the priest could stand out of sight in a cubby-hole and give answer through the wall to his visitor as if he were Ammon speaking in person. Perhaps Alexander revealed his question inside the shrine to the high priest alone, who then put it to the boat outside and returned to a

Alexander never revealed what he had asked, but 'he used to say that he had heard what pleased him'. His questions, however, are not all irrecoverable. Four years later, at the mouth of the river Indus in India, he offered sacrifice to the 'gods whom Ammon had bidden him honour', and did the same on the following day, this time to a different set of gods; evidently he had asked the oracle which gods he should propitiate at particular points on his journey eastwards, a request which had been made at Delphi by Xenophon, the last Greek general to have marched inland into Asia. Ammon advised, among others, Poseidon and the other sea gods, perhaps because Alexander asked specifically whom to honour if he reached the outer Ocean. It is unlikely that this was Alexander's only question, as his secrecy and his lasting honour for Ammon only make sense if he had asked something more personal, probably whether and when he would be victorious. But camp gossip had its own ideas, and within twelve years of Alexander's death, two questions to Ammon had gained favour: Alexander, it was said, had asked the god whether he would rule the whole earth and whether he had punished all his father's murderers, but the priest warned him that Ammon, not Philip, was now his father. These fanciful guesses are most interesting evidence of how his soldiers remembered him. The first picked up the themes of invincibility and mastery of the world, both of which were encouraged by Alexander himself; it is also noticeable that the 'sacrifices according to Amnion's oracle' are first mentioned on the borders of his Indian march, when he had reached what he believed to be the outer Ocean; he also made two distinct sacrifices, as if Amnion's advice had been detailed for that particular moment. The second 'question' showed none of the contempt for Philip which others later attributed to him, and it raised the problem of his own relationship to Amnion. It is this which gives the consultation its peculiar importance.

After the visit to the oasis Alexander took Zeus Ammon closely to heart for the rest of his life. He invoked his name among his close friends and he sacrificed to him throughout his march as one of his usual gods; at a most emotional moment, when his exact words are known for certain, he swore an oath in Ammon's name as proof of his own deep gratitude. Personally, he turned to Zeus Amnion at the most painful crisis of his life, and when his beloved Hephaistion died, he sent envoys from central Iran to the Siwah oasis to ask whether his dead lover should be worshipped as a god or hero; when he died himself, it was a