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M. Mendoza & B. Antela-Bernárdez (eds.), The Impact of Alexander's Conquest. Subjects, Conquered and Chroniclers, Alcalá, Editorial Universidad de Alcalá, 2022

This study focuses on the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem, an apocryphal letter sent by Alexander to Aristotle, describing the territory and the wonders of India. The text probably dates back to the 7th century AD. It is a work that portrays India as a symbolic, not yet civilized space. This research deepens the dynamics underlying the text, starting from the analysis of the narrative pathway that progressively follows the advancement of Alexander and his army, who are able to conquer the territory thanks to a skillful use of weapons and the endurance of the soldiers. The Indian space, especially in King Porus' palace, conceals immeasurable treasures, but the Macedonians have to fight with weapons against terrifying beings, monsters and wild animals. They also have to face extraordinary atmospheric phenomena. War moves from a real historical dimension to an to an out-of-history, timeless perspective because it is devoid of enemies that are concretely human. At the end of the story Alexander is said to have built gold pillars and five gold trophies for himself, to affect his victories and travels. Examining the matter well, it emerges that he represents the new order of the cosmos, because he has now subdued the world. Thus, the main aim of this investigation is to demonstrate how the Epistola reveals the mechanisms through which the Western thought has devised a "mythical" description of India that is both attractive and terrible at the same time. The mythologization of the ethno-geographic view emerges powerfully to strengthen the dual device of self-identification and exclusion of the Other, who - through a process of "colonization" of the imaginary - is bound to become a subject to Western domination.

2023

1. Preface ………………………………………………........................................ 1 2. The Edges of the Earth ………………….………….................................1 3. Of Animals, Trees, and Insects: Iconography of the Eastern Horizon ……………………………………………….............................…... 2 4. Gilgameš …………………………………………………...............................….. 4 5. The Babylonian oikoumenē ‘Known World’, Immortality, and the Path of the Sun ………………………………………...............................……. 6 6. Creation and the Space-Time Metaphor ……………………....………… 8 7. The Future and the Bourne of the Unknown ………………….……..… 9 8. The Cutting of Fates and Judgments on the Horizon …………… 10 9. The Saw of Šamaš ……………………………….……………......................... 11 10. The Cosmography of Birth ……………………………………….............……. 11

For over a millennium and a half—from c. 250 BCE to c. 1450 CE—the single most popular work of fiction in the world was the network of closely related texts that contemporary scholars call the "Alexander Romance." From its joint origins in Ptolemaic Egypt and Roman Greece, the Alexander Romance proliferated vigorously, first around the Mediterranean, then concomitantly east and north across Eurasia, as well as south¬ward into Ethiopia and sub-Saharan Africa. By 1400, virtually every language of culture from the Malay Peninsula to Spain and Timbuktu to Iceland possessed its own version of the fictional life of Alexander. Within each Sprachgebiet, moreover, there tended to be multiple recensions of the work, with a considerable degree of variance between the manuscripts, which not only translated the text from one language to another, but simultaneously reworked the narrative locally to accommodate each new cultural context. Alone among fictions of the ancient world, the Alexander of the Romance appears in the Bible, the Talmud, and the Qur´ān, as well as in the Mazdean Zand, so that acquaintance with the universal conqueror and his fabulous adventures concomitantly traveled with the diffusion of Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Iranian scripture. Virgil’s Aeneid may have bequeathed to Medieval and Modern Europe its basic myth for the Westering of culture, but the Alexander Romance successfully galvanized readers collectively across the better part of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Since no single study could hope to do justice to this vast and unwieldy corpus in its entirety, the aim of Holy Wandering is to assess the phenomenon of the Alexander Romance as a whole. In particular, the book explores the relationship between three things: (1) the great Levantine-Mediterranean tributary states within which the Romance flourished—Persia, Macedonia, Rome, Aksum, the Seljuk and Ottoman empires, Songhai, as well as feudal Europe; (2) the era of high metaphysics—pagan, Judaic, Christian, Mazdean, Islamic—which served as the dominant ideology of tributary power; and (3) the Alexander Romance as the supreme fiction of the era which narrates and thereby reveals the complicity between tributary economics and neo-Platonic philosophy. Ultimately, then, the question that the book seeks to answer is: What made the Alexander Romance the supreme fiction of what Gustav Droysen might have called "the long Hellenistic era", and why have so few people heard of it today?

Transactions of the American Philological Association, 2004

Faventia, 2022

The new mythical sagas that originated from Alexander's campaign were fully integrated into Greek mythology, as is revealed by the references to India in the Library. Both the reference to the pillars of Dionysus and the ill-fated expedition of Medos depend on versions of the myth that arose in connection with Alexander's campaign and seem to suggest the Apollodorus's dependence on a source connecting Asia with the Greek mythical past.

The Hellenistic Far East in Historical Fiction: Ancient History, Modern Ideologies R. Mairs In: Seen from Oxyartes’ Rock. Central Asia Under and After Alexander. Proceedings of the Third Meeting of the Hellenistic Central Asia Research Network, edited by J. Havlík and L. Stančo Charles University 2021

The cradle of Vedic culture flourished alongside the Sindhu River in present-day India, inhabited by followers of the Sanātana-dharma, or “eternal religion” (Satprakashananda, 1977). Called “Hindu” by explorers from the North, theirs was a culture of philosophical fecundity that gave rise to diverse traditions including the Carvākā, Jaina, Bauddha, Vaiśeṣika, Nyāya, Sānkhya, Yoga, Mīmāṁsa and Vedānta, to name just the most prominent. Whether by complete adherence or negation, the teachings of the Vedas provided a shared belief system that contained all of these religio-philosophical schools (darśanas). We will explore this overarching view originating from Vedic culture as the “Eastern containing myth”—a belief system that holds the nature of creation as cyclical, arising, and resolving in a beginningless and endless succession.

in: R. Rollinger, B. Gufler, M. Lang & I. Madreiter (eds.), Interkulturalität in der Altern Welt: Vorderasien, Hellas, Ägypten und die vielfältigen Ebenen des Kontakts (Philippika 34), Wiesbaden 2010: 323-59.

The story of the water of life in the Alexander Romance (codex L 2.39-41) includes the figure of a wise old man. Alexander forbids aged people to follow his expedition, but this elderly fellow is hidden among the soldiers and at a crucial moment advises the Macedonian king how to find the way in the land of darkness. This episode is based on a widespread international folktale (ATU type 981, “Wisdom of Hidden Old Man Saves Kingdom”), already familiar in the ancient world. Graeco-Roman examples indicate that this tale type was in circulation at least since Hellenistic times. Other evidence suggests that it was known over large areas of the ancient Orient, from the Phoenician coast to Mesopotamia and India. The broader narrative about the land of darkness and the immortal fount also derives from eastern (Mesopotamian or Indian) mythical lore. The elderly man’s story is intrinsically connected with the water of life within Alexander’s legend. Demonstrating the virtues of aged people, the sagacious elder vindicates the natural course of human life; this casts an ironic light on Alexander’s wild pursuit of immortality. Pseudo-Kallisthenes’ narrative shows that the immortality desired by Alexander is of no use to the human race. Although the Macedonian conqueror misses the opportunity, there are two characters in the Greek text who do taste the magic water, become immortal, and yet this proves far from beneficial for them: the cook Andreas and Alexander’s daughter Kale. Both of them are expelled from the human world, to lead a bleak and phantasmal kind of existence. Their immortality is not a blessing but a curse. Neither enjoyment nor profit, neither glory nor wisdom can exist outside the normal evolvement of human time — the one so triumphantly exemplified by the sagacious old veteran. This is a peculiarly Hellenic idea, the distinctive contribution of Greek storytellers to the “immortal fount” traditions borrowed from the Orient. It is not present in the Mesopotamian myths about the water or plant of life. These only deplore the hero’s loss of the opportunity for immortality as a great misfortune. For the Mesopotamian mind, everlasting life is the greatest boon that has been denied to our race. If man could become immortal, he would achieve the highest ideal and the utmost felicity. The Greeks thought otherwise. In their view, immortality is not meant for humans, not in the sense of a gift withheld from mankind, but because, if men truly achieved immortal existence, this would lead them to hell rather than heaven. It was the Hellenic spirit that fashioned the myth of Tithonos: the beloved mortal youth who was granted eternal life, only to be condemned to perennial senescence and decay without death. The fate of Alexander’s cook is comparable: he will lead an endless existence bound to the bottom of the ocean, interminably drowning with a stone around his neck, suffering everlasting undeath. This is immortality under Greek eyes: inhuman, unnatural, as desolate as the sea and the desert. There is a greater disaster than losing it, and this is to gain it. The only wisdom is to live out one’s mortal life in full, ageing and acquiring experience with the natural passage of time. This is the profound meaning of Alexander’s adventure with the water of life; and the story of the hidden old man essentially contributes to it, as one of its prime narrative components. The Greek storytellers borrowed the main materials of this legend from the East. But they combined them in a new distinctive way, which helped them infuse the storyline with a characteristically Hellenic worldview. In the Greeks’ hands, the ancient oriental myth about mankind’s lost chance for immortality was transformed into a wisdom parable about the meaning of our life. Rewriting the legend of the water of life in the 20th century, Jorge Luis Borges conceived with enlightening insight that immortality is another form of non-existence. The ancient Greeks had already glimpsed the same truth. Alexander in the Romance does not attain this level of wisdom. He is only left to inconsolably mourn about the eternity he was not fated to conquer. Failing to drink the liquid of life, Alexander will die at the finale, ironically, by a drink of death: a cup of poisoned wine offered him by his cupbearer, who has conspired with many of his marshals to murder him. A second irony also marks the Macedonian king’s end: as he loathed old age, so he will die young, never reaching the mature sagacity of the elderly veteran once hidden among his soldiers. Nevertheless, Odysseus, that distant precursor of Pseudo-Kallisthenes’ Alexander, well knew the truth about immortality. He refused the eternal life proposed him on Calypso’s isle, in order to go back to his wife and home, to Ithaca and the society of his peers. In his tale, just as in the case of Alexander’s cook, immortality was a lonely spot amidst the vast humanless ocean. An appendix examines two medieval oriental offshoots ultimately dependent on the old man’s story in the Alexander Romance: an Indian folktale from Haribhadra’s Upadeśapada and a legend of the Oghuz Turks. The Greek narrative probably spread to those areas via Iran (cf. its Persian rendering in Nizami’s Iskandarnameh).

This paper discusses various eastern views of Alexander the Great reminding us that his impact extends beyond the West.

The Past Through Narratology: New Approaches to Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, 2022

Within the 'spatial turn', in the course of the last three decades a new theorisation of maps and mapping has fundamentally changed the way we look at maps and their production today. This rethinking of maps has paved the way to an innovative interaction between cartographers and literary scholars. If maps function within a communicative act, they can not only be 'read' but also 'narrated'. The type of maps that seems the most suitable to study from a narratological perspective is itinerary maps. Such maps, in fact, reflect more clearly how space is experienced, thus allowing us to detect the dialectic between place and narrative. They might present a scaled representation of space, but the main attribute of itineraries is to mirror a specific 'lived space', one made significant by the movement of people. This contribution focuses on a few details of the 'Peutinger Table'-the references to Alexander the Great and his campaigns in Central Asia and India-with the purpose of highlighting how such textual and iconographic elements assisted the imaginations of Roman and medieval observers and provided stories associated with these places. These map's elements reflect and preserve the emotional ties and intellectual engagement that map-readers might develop with these particular locations. They show the participation of political ideologies and ethnic discourse in the creation and representation of a distinct sense of place.

Series: the Greek Worldview

Antichistica, 2024

The volume publishes the proceeding of the workshop Wisdom Between East and West: Mesopotamia, Greece and Beyond held at the University of Turin on 26-27 October 2022. The volume collects papers from Assyriologists, Classicists and Biblical scholars around the topic of wisdom. Scholars have investigated wisdom from various angles, from speculative thought to literature, from science, to dance, to proverbs.

STUDIA HERCYNIA XXV/1, 82–104, 2021

In less than twelve years (334-323 BC) Alexander the Great built a vast empire stretching from Macedon in the West to Ancient India in the East. Alexander united the then known world and its different populations under a single political institution, but he did not create deep intercultural connections among the Macedonians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the many populations of the Achaemenid Empire, nor did he establish a long-lasting universal administrative system for all provinces. Scholarship has often excused Alexander's lack of interest in renovating the political fabric of the Persian Empire as the inevitable consequence of the shortness of his rule; it has interpreted his actions as those of a brutish conqueror when he rejected or took down Achaemenid institutions, or as those of the 'last of the Achaemenids'-after Pierre Briant's expression-when he adopted Oriental etiquette. The aim of this paper is to assess the nature of Alexander's statesmanship, specifically with regard to his impact on the local populations of the Iranian Plateau and Central Asia. Undeniably, Alexander was more a conqueror and a general rather than a political leader; however, his politico-administrative choices, which combined conservation and transformation, show acute political awareness and a strong instinct for adaptation in line with the different ethnic and cultural backgrounds of the empire. This is especially noteworthy if we consider his fourth-century BC context. In fact, from the ancient Greek sources it appears that Alexander fostered some intercultural exchanges, but also wanted to keep ethnic identities and their role in the empire distinct. The paper also seeks to challenge ancient and modern scholarship's 'Hellenocentric' view and to investigate how local societies in Iranian Plateau and Central Asia actually responded to Alexander's leadership.

Chakrabarti, Dilip K. (ed.) History of Ancient India, Vol. IX: Science and Technology, Medicine , 2023

The research dealing with ancient India, has put less emphasis on the ‘geographical thought’ and metaphysical context, which may be compared with the scientific notion of modern geography; some such examples are presented here. The Vedic sages, living close to nature were enlightened by the inherent messages that they communicated, taught, professed, and transferred to the seekers and followers through writings and sacred teachings. Among such thoughts, different attributes and dimensions are narrated; here the chosen ones included narrating the manifestation of the cosmos and human transcendence, illustrated with evolution and unity, the eternity of time, spirality of the cosmic rhythm, spiritual correspondences, the Mother Earth as Goddess, and some messages for the sustainable future are described in nutshell. Together with the physical order exists an invisible principle of order linking the human soul to the earth and further up to the stars. This way one can propose micro-, meso- and macro cosmos. The harmonic integrity in Cosmos Spirit Man has been a major issue of debate in ancient mythologies. Let us re-interpret, re-orient, and re-appraise the deep issues of Indian thought, so as to make the prophecy a reality. Keywords: manifestation, eternity, transcendence, sacredscape, Kālī, Vedas, Purāṇas.

Nowadays the collision between eastern and western cultures has been more prominent therefore the study of Orientalism becomes more relevant for the understanding, this time, not of the western experience of the east but the eastern experience of the west. Looking back to Alexander's conquest of Asia Minor gives insight to Orientalism in one of the first and pioneering western perceptions of the east.

2022

Some typos and citation notes removed from some quotes. Cover photo: 5,500-year-old Egyptian map. Warren writes that Hindu and Zoroastrian "Indo-Aryan" cosmologies include the World and the Underworld. He lists commonalities of the Babylonian and Indo-Aryan cosmologies: 1. Like the "Upper E-KUR" in that diagram, the Sumeru of the Indo-Aryans is a mons montium, a true "Weltberg." 2. In both cosmological systems this Weltberg is at the same time par excellence the possession of the gods, a Götterberg. 3. In both this Götterberg is not only divinely vast and beautiful, but also, in shape, quadrangular. 4. In both the axis of the heavens and of the earth is perpendicular in position, and consequently the top of the quadrangular Götterberg is the true summit of the earth. 5. In both this crowning summit of the earth has an antipodal counterpart in a corresponding inverted Weltberg underneath the earth. In Chaldea this peculiar conception seems to have been of pre-Semitic antiquity. One of the first of Western scholars to recognize the parallelism and something of its significance for Comparative Cosmology was Lenormant, who a generation ago wrote as follows: "Dans les conceptions de la cosmologie 21 mythique des Indiens on oppose au Sou-Merou, 'le bon Merou' du nord, un Kou-Merou mauvais et funest, qui y fait exactement un pendant et en est l'antithèse. De même les Chaldéens opposaient à la divine et bienheureuse montagne de l'Orient (accadien 'garsag-babbarra = assyrien šad çit šamši) une montagne funeste et ténébreuse (accadien 'garsag-gigga = assyrien šad erib šamši), située dans les parties basses de la terre." -Origines de l'Histoire, tom, ii, 1, p. 134. 6. In the Babylonian cosmos the upper hemi-gaea has seven stages; in the Indo-Aryan it has seven varshas. 7. In the Babylonian system the lower or inverted hemi-gaea has seven stages; in the Indo-Aryan it has seven pātālas. 8. West of Babylonia is found the Hebrew conception of a quadrifurcate river of Paradise which flowed forth in opposite directions to water the four quarters of the pristine earth. East of Babylonia is found the Indo-Aryan conception of the Gan̄gāstream which, descending from heaven to the top of Sumeru, there divides itself, according to the Vishnu Purana, into four world-rivers, and descending the several sides of the mountain from varsha to varsha, waters the whole earth. It is hardly possible to doubt that in both cases the conception was borrowed from the world-view of the people residing midway between the Hebrews on the one side and the Indo-Aryans on the other, or was at least common to the three. 9. In the Indo-Aryan, as in the Babylonian world-view, the seven divisions of the lower or inverted hemi-gaea 22 can be described (as they are in the Mahā-Bhārata) as subterranean, and yet, at the same time, as capable of receiving light from the sun and moon. Our diagram clearly shows both the possibility and the entire naturalness of this. 10. In the Babylonian conception the upper ... planetary hemi-ouranoi were seven in number, and each of them, in receding order away from the Weltberg, was located at an increasing interval or distance; so is it also in the Indo-Aryan cosmos. 11. According to the Babylonians, the under ... planetary hemi-ouranoi were also seven in number, and these, numbering from their center, were located at ever wider distances asunder; so is it also with the dvīpas in the Indo-Aryan cosmos. Hierakonpolis Tomb 100 with the painted inner wall on its southwestern side It was painted with east and west reversed, and with north and south reversed, similarly to the modern antipodes map shown on the next page. For this reason I have flipped the images of the Hierakonpolis map to show the more familiar bird's-eye view of America, and I generally show it with north being "up" instead of west being "up" as it originally was, to be more easily recognizable to people who are familiar with north being "up" in modern maps. I have also restored the color to a faded portion of North America.

Studia Hercynia vol. 25 (1), 2021

The meetings with Indian gymnosophists (γυμνοσοφισταί) or 'naked philosophers' are one of the most popular motifs from the stories of Alexander the Great. The accounts of these meetings are preserved in Strabo, Plutarch, Arrian, Diogenes Laertius, and some later sources. These descriptions have been repeatedly analysed by previous scholars. However, most researchers focused on the problems of cultural differences and overlooked the issue of intercultural relations. They have often considered these descriptions in a dichotomous perspective. Therefore, the aim of this study is reconsideration of these accounts in the broader context of relations between the Greeks and the Indians with particular emphasis on the following issues: the communication problems, which occurred between the Greeks and the Indians, the relation between the asceticism in India and the Cynic philosophy in Greece, the relation between the Buddhist and early Indian sceptical thought and Greek philosophy. Because the study of these problems can lead to a biased search for influences, way of looking at them proposed in this paper is the so-called middle ground.

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