The two-horned one (
ancient Greek coin) issued in the name of
Alexander the Great, depicting Alexander with the horns of
Ammon-Ra (242/241 BC, posthumous issue). Displayed at the
British Museum. The literal translation of the Arabic phrase
"Dhu al-Qarnayn", as written in the Quran, is "the two-horned man". Alexander the Great was portrayed in his own time with horns following the
iconography of the Egyptian god
Ammon-Ra, who held the position of transcendental, self-created creator deity "par excellence". Rams were a symbol of
virility due to their
rutting behaviour; the
horns of Ammon may have also represented the East and West of the Earth, and one of the titles of
Ammon was "the two-horned". Alexander was depicted with the horns of Ammon as a result of his conquest of
ancient Egypt in 332 BC, where the priesthood received him as the son of the god Ammon, who was identified by the ancient Greeks with
Zeus, the
King of the Gods. The combined
deity Zeus-Ammon was a distinct figure in ancient Greek mythology. According to five historians of antiquity (
Arrian,
Curtius,
Diodorus,
Justin, and
Plutarch), Alexander visited the
Oracle of Ammon at
Siwa in the
Libyan desert and rumours spread that the Oracle had revealed Alexander's father to be the
deity Ammon, rather than Philip. Alexander is said by some to have been convinced of his own divinity:
Ancient Greek coins, such as the coins minted by Alexander's successor
Lysimachus (360–281 BC), depict the ruler with the distinctive horns of
Ammon on his head.
Archaeologists have found a large number of different types of ancients coins depicting Alexander the Great with two horns. The 4th century BC silver ("four
drachma") coin, depicting a
deified Alexander with two horns, replaced the 5th century BC
Athenian silver (which depicted the goddess
Athena) as the most widely used coin in the Greek world. After Alexander's conquests, the drachma was used in many of the
Hellenistic kingdoms in the
Middle East, including the
Ptolemaic kingdom in
Alexandria. The
Arabic unit of currency known as the
dirham, known from pre-Islamic times up to the present day, inherited its name from the drachma. In the late 2nd century BC, silver coins depicting Alexander with
ram horns were used as a principal coinage in
Arabia and were issued by an
Arab ruler by the name of Abi'el who ruled in the south-eastern region of the
Arabian Peninsula. with horns discovered in 2018. Published by the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus. In 1971,
Ukrainian archeologist B. M. Mozolevskii discovered an ancient
Scythian kurgan (burial mound) containing many treasures. The burial site was constructed in the 4th century BC near the city of
Pokrov and is given the name
Tovsta Mohyla (another name is
Babyna Mogila). Amongst the artifacts excavated at this site were four silver gilded
phalera (ancient
Roman military medals). Two of the four medals are identical and depict the head of a bearded man with two horns, while the other two medals are also identical and depict the head of a clean-shaven man with two horns. According to a recent theory, the bearded figure with horns is actually Zeus-Ammon and the clean-shaved figure is none other than Alexander the Great. Alexander has also been identified, since ancient times, with the horned figure in the
Old Testament in the prophecy of
Daniel 8 who overthrows the kings of Media and Persia. In the prophecy,
Daniel has a vision of a ram with two long horns and verse 20 explains that "The ram which thou sawest having two horns is the kings of
Media and
Persia": The Christian
Syriac version of the
Alexander romance, in the sermon by
Jacob of Serugh, describes Alexander as having been given horns of iron by God. The legend describes Alexander (as a Christian king) bowing himself in prayer, saying: While the
Syriac Legend references the horns of Alexander, it consistently refers to the hero by his Greek name, not using a variant epithet. The use of the Islamic epithet "Dhu al-Qarnayn", the "two-horned", first occurred in the Quran. In Christian Alexander legends written in
Ethiopic (an ancient
South Semitic language) between the 14th and the 16th century, Alexander the Great is always explicitly referred to using the
epithet the "Two Horned". A passage from the Ethiopic Christian legend describes the
Angel of the Lord calling Alexander by this name: References to Alexander's supposed horns are found in literature ranging many different languages, regions and centuries: For these reasons, among others, the Quran's Arabic epithet "Dhul-Qarnayn", literally meaning "the two-horned one", is interpreted as a reference to Alexander the Great.
Alexander's Wall painting from the 16th century illustrating the building of the wall with the help of the
jinn Early accounts of Alexander's Wall The building of gates in the Caucasus Mountains by Alexander to repel the barbarian peoples identified with Gog and Magog has ancient provenance and the wall is known as the
Gates of Alexander, or the Caspian Gates. The name Caspian Gates originally applied to the narrow region at the southeast corner of the
Caspian Sea, through which Alexander actually marched in the pursuit of
Bessus in 329 BC, although he did not stop to fortify it. It was transferred to the passes through the Caucasus, on the other side of the Caspian, by the more fanciful historians of Alexander. The Jewish historian
Flavius Josephus (37–100 AD) mentions that: Josephus also records that the people of Magog, the Magogites, were synonymous with the Scythians. According to Andrew Runni Anderson, this merely indicates that the main elements of the story were already in place six centuries before the Quran's revelation, not that the story itself was known in the cohesive form apparent in the Quranic account. Similarly,
St. Jerome (347–420 AD), in his
Letter 77, mentions that, In his Commentary on
Ezekiel (38:2), Jerome identifies the nations located beyond the Caucasus mountains and near
Lake Maeotis as Gog and Magog. Thus the Gates of Alexander legend was combined with the legend of Gog and Magog from the
Book of Revelation. It has been suggested that the incorporation of the Gog and Magog legend into the
Alexander romance was prompted by the
invasion of the Huns across the
Caucasus mountains in 395 AD into
Armenia and
Syria.
Alexander's Wall in Christian legends Christian legends speak of the Caspian Gates (Gates of Alexander), also known as Alexander's wall, built by Alexander the Great in the Caucasus mountains. Several variations of the legend can be found. In the story, Alexander the Great built a gate of iron between two mountains, at the end of the
Earth, to prevent the armies of
Gog and Magog from ravaging the plains. The Christian legend was written in
Syria shortly before the Quran's writing and closely parallels the story of Dhul-Qarnayn. The legend describes an
apocryphal letter from Alexander to his mother, wherein he writes: These
pseudepigraphic letters from Alexander to his mother Olympias and his tutor Aristotle, describing his marvellous adventures at the end of the World, date back to the original Greek
recension α written in the 4th century in Alexandria. The letters are "the literary expression of a living popular tradition" that had been evolving for at least three centuries before the Quran was written. Later historians would regard these legends as false: In the Muslim world, several expeditions were undertaken to try to find and study Alexanders's wall, specifically the
Caspian Gates of Derbent. An early expedition to Derbent was ordered by the Caliph
Umar (586–644 AD) himself, during the
Arab conquest of Armenia where they heard about Alexander's Wall in Derbent from the conquered Christian Armenians. Umar's expedition was recorded by the renowned
exegetes of the Quran,
Al-Tabarani (873–970 AD) and
Ibn Kathir (1301–1373 AD), and by the Muslim geographer
Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229 AD): Two hundred years later, the
Abbasid Caliph
Al-Wathiq (d. 847 AD) dispatched an expedition to study the wall of Dhul-Qarnain in Derbent, Russia. The expedition was led by
Sallam-ul-Tarjuman, whose observations were recorded by
Yaqut al-Hamawi and by
Ibn Kathir: The Muslim geographer
Yaqut al-Hamawi further confirmed the same view in a number of places in his book on geography; for instance under the heading "Khazar" (Caspian) he writes: The Caliph
Harun al-Rashid (763–809 AD) even spent some time living in Derbent. Not all Muslim travellers and scholars, however, associated Dhul-Qarnayn's wall with the Caspian Gates of Derbent. For example, the Muslim explorer
Ibn Battuta (1304–1369 AD) travelled to China on order of the
Sultan of Delhi,
Muhammad bin Tughluq and he comments in his travel log that "Between it [the city of
Zaitun in
Fujian] and the rampart of Yajuj and Majuj [Gog and Magog] is sixty days' travel." The translator of the travel log notes that Ibn Battuta confused the Great Wall of China with that supposedly built by Dhul-Qarnayn.
Gog and Magog In the Quran, it is none other than the
Gog and Magog people whom Dhul-Qarnayn has enclosed behind a wall, preventing them from invading the Earth. In Islamic
eschatology, before the Day of Judgement Gog and Magog will destroy this gate, allowing them to ravage the Earth, as it is described in the Quran:
Gog and Magog in Christian legends appearing in a German encyclopedia published by
Joseph Meyer (1796-1856 AD). The T–O map was the first printed map in Europe. The map shows a disc shaped Earth surrounded by
Oceanus, with the location
Gog and Magog to the north, and
Paropamisadae mountains (
Hindu Kush) to the east in Asia. In the Christian legends, Alexander built the wall against Gog and Magog in the north, near the Caspian sea, and then went to the ends of the earth at the Paropamisadae, where it was supposed that the sun rises. In the Syriac Christian legends, Alexander the Great encloses the Gog and Magog horde behind a mighty gate between two mountains, preventing Gog and Magog from invading the Earth. In addition, it is written in the Christian legend that in the
end times God will cause the Gate of Gog and Magog to be destroyed, allowing the Gog and Magog horde to ravage the Earth; The Christian Syriac legend describes a
flat Earth orbited by the
sun and surrounded by the
Paropamisadae (Hindu Kush) mountains. The Paropamisadae mountains are in turn surrounded by a narrow tract of land which is followed by a treacherous Ocean sea called
Okeyanos. It is within this tract of land between the
Paropamisadae mountains and
Okeyanos that Alexander encloses Gog and Magog, so that they could not cross the mountains and invade the Earth. The legend describes "the old wise men" explaining this
geography and
cosmology of the Earth to Alexander, and then Alexander setting out to enclose Gog and Magog behind a mighty gate between a narrow passage at the end of the flat Earth:
Flat Earth beliefs in the Early Christian Church varied and the Fathers of the Church shared different approaches. Those of them who were more close to
Aristotle and
Plato's visions, like
Origen, shared peacefully the belief in a
spherical Earth. A second tradition, including
St Basil and
St Augustine, accepted the idea of the round Earth and the radial gravity, but in a critical way. In particular they pointed out a number of doubts about the
antipodes and the physical reasons of the radial gravity. However, a flat Earth approach was more or less shared by all the Fathers coming from the Syriac area, who were more inclined to follow the letter of the
Old Testament.
Diodore of Tarsus (?–390 AD),
Cosmas Indicopleustes (6th century), and
Chrysostom (347–407 AD) belonged to this flat Earth tradition.
Prophecy about the Sabir Huns invasion (514 CE) The first ex-eventu prophecy about Gog and Magog in the Syriac Christian Legend relates to the invasion of the Sabir Huns in 514–515 CE (immediately before the second ex-eventu prophecy about the Khazars discussed below). In a paper supporting van Bladel's thesis on the direct dependency of the Dhu'l Qarnayn story on the Syriac Legend, Tommaso Tesei nevertheless highlights Károly Czeglédy's identification that this first prophecy already had a 6th-century CE existence as an apocalytic revelation involving the arrival of the Huns in a passage of the Lives of the Eastern Saints by John of Ephesus (d. 586 ca.).
Prophecy about the Khazars invasion (627 CE) In the Christian
Alexander romance literature, Gog and Magog were sometimes associated with the
Khazars, a Turkic people who lived near the
Caspian Sea. The invasion of the Khazars around 627 CE appears in the Syriac Christian Legend as an ex-eventu prophecy involving the Huns (including Gog and Magog) passing through the gate and destroying the land, which gives the terminus post quem of 628 CE for its final redaction. In his 9th century work , the
Benedictine monk
Christian of Stavelot refers to the Khazars as
Hunnic descendants of Gog and Magog, and says they are "circumcised and observing all [the laws of] Judaism"; the Khazars were a
Central Asian people with a long association with
Judaism. A
Georgian tradition, echoed in a chronicle, also identifies the Khazars with Gog and Magog, stating they are "wild men with hideous faces and the manners of wild beasts, eaters of blood". Early Muslim scholars writing about Dhul-Qarnayn also associated Gog and Magog with the Khazars.
Ibn Kathir (1301–1373 CE), the famous commentator of the Quran, identified Gog and Magog with the Khazars who lived between the Black and
Caspian Sea in his work
Al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah (
The Beginning and the End). The Muslim explorer
Ahmad ibn Fadlan, in his travelogue regarding his diplomatic mission in 921 AD to
Volga Bulgars (a
vassal of the
Khazarian Empire), noted the beliefs about Gog and Magog being the ancestors of the Khazars. Thus Muslim scholars associated the Khazars with Dhul-Qarnayn just as the Christian legends associated the Khazars with Alexander the Great.
The rising place of the Sun A peculiar aspect of the story of Dhul-Qarnayn, in the Quran, is that it describes Dhul-Qarnayn travelling to "the rising place of the Sun" and the "setting place of the Sun", where he saw the Sun sets into a murky (or boiling) spring of water (or mud). Dhul-Qarnayn also finds a people living by the "rising place of the Sun", and finds that these people somehow have "no shelter". In his commentary of the Quran,
Ibn Kathir (1301–1373 CE) explains that verse 18:89 is referring to the furthest point that could be travelled west: In this commentary Ibn Kathir differentiates between the end of the Earth and the supposed "place in the sky" where the sun sets (the "resting place" of the sun). Ibn Kathir contends that Dhul-Qarnayn did reach the farthest place that could be travelled west but not the "resting place" of the sun and he goes on to mention that the
People of the Book (Jews and Christians) tell myths about Dhul-Qarnayn travelling so far beyond the end of the Earth that the sun was "behind him". This shows that Ibn Kathir was aware of the Christian legends and it suggests that Ibn Kathir considered Christian myths about Alexander to be referring to the same figure as the Dhul-Qarnayn mentioned in the Qu'an. A similar theme is elaborated upon in several places in the Islamic
hadith literature, in
Sahih al-Bukhari and
Sahih Muslim: The setting place of the sun is also commented on by
Al-Tabari (838-923 AD) and
Al-Qurtubi (1214–1273 AD) and, like
Ibn Kathir, they showed some reservations towards the literal idea of the sun setting in a muddy spring but held to the basic theme of Dhul-Qarnayn reaching the ends of the Earth. That the Earth must be spherical was known since at least the time of
Pythagoras (570–495 BC), but this knowledge did not reach ancient folklore such as the
Alexander romance where Alexander travels to the ends of a flat Earth. It is notable that, unlike the Babylonians, Greeks, and Indians, the
pre-Islamic Arabs had no scientific astronomy. Their knowledge of astronomy was limited to measuring time based on empirical observations of the "rising and setting" of the sun, moon, and particular stars. This area of astronomical study was known as
anwa and continued to be developed after
Islamization by the Arabs.
Astronomy in medieval Islam began in the 8th century and the first major Muslim work of astronomy was
Zij al-Sindh written in 830 by
al-Khwarizmi. The work is significant as it introduced the
Ptolemaic system into Islamic sciences (the Ptolemaic system was ultimately replaced by the
Copernican system during the
Scientific Revolution in Europe).
The rising place of the Sun in the Alexander legends 's view of the world (prior to 900 BC). The Homeric conception of the world involved a flat, circular Earth, surrounded by mountains and by
Oceanus, the world-ocean of
classical antiquity, considered to be an enormous river encircling the world. The Sun emerges from underneath the Earth, travelling along the fixed dome of the sky, and is shown rising from Oceanus. The Christian legend is much more detailed than the Quran's version and elaborates at length about the
cosmology of the Earth that is implied by the story: This ancient
motif of a legendary figure travelling to the end of Earth is also found in the
Epic of Gilgamesh, which can be dated to c. 2000 BC, making it one of the earliest known works of literary writing. In the
epic poem, in tablet nine, Gilgamesh sets out on a quest for the
Water of Life to seek immortality. Gilgamesh travels far to the east, to the mountain passes at the ends of the earth where he grapples and slays monstrous mountain lions, bears and others. Eventually he comes to the twin peaks of Mount Mashu at the end of the earth, from where the sun rises from the other world, the gate of which is guarded by two terrible scorpion-beings. They allow him to proceed through the gate after Gilgamesh convinces them to let him pass, stating his divinity and desperation, and he travels through the dark tunnel where the sun travels every night. Just before the sun is about to catch up with him, and with the North Wind and ice lashing him, he reaches the end. The world at the end of the tunnel is a bright wonderland full of trees with leaves of jewels. The 17th chapter of the apocryphal
Book of Enoch describes a journey to the far west where the fire of the west receives every setting of the sun and a river of fire empties into the great western sea. Chapters 72–80 describe the risings and settings of the sun through 12 portals of heaven in the east and west. The myth of a flat Earth surrounded by an Ocean into which the sun sets is also found in the
Iliad, the famous epic poem written by
Homer and dated to c. 900 BC. The story of creation in the
Hebrew Bible, in
Genesis 1:10, (dated c. 900–550 BC) is also considered by scholars to be describing a flat Earth surrounded by a sea. The ancient Greek historian
Herodotus (484–425 BC) also gave an account of the eastern "end of the Earth", in his descriptions of India. He reported that in India the sun's heat is extremely intense in the morning, instead of noon being the hottest time of day. It has been argued that he based this on his belief that since India is located at the extreme east of a flat Earth, it would only be logical if the morning were unbearably hot due to the sun's proximity.
Alexander's travels and his advances eastward ended at the fringes of India. The Quran and the
Alexander romance both have it that Dhul-Qarnayn (or Alexander) travelled a great deal. In the Quran's story of Dhul-Qarnayn, "God gave him unto every thing a road" (or more literally, "We gave him the means of everything" 18:84) He travels as far as the ends of the Earth, to the place on the Earth where the Sun sets (the west) and the place on the Earth where the Sun rises (the east). The Quran portrays him travelling to the "setting of the sun". Muslim interpretations of these verses are varied, but classical Muslim scholars seemed to have been of the opinion that Dhul-Qarnayn's journey was real, not
allegorical, and that Dhul-Qarnayn's wall is also a real, physical wall somewhere on Earth. In the Christian legends, Alexander travels to the places of the setting and rising of the Sun and this is meant to say that he travelled to the ends of the
flat Earth and thus he had traversed the entire world. This legendary account served to convey the theme of Alexander's exploits as a great conqueror. Alexander was indeed a great conqueror, having ruled the largest empire in
ancient history by the time he was 25 years old. However, the true historical extent of Alexander's travels are known to be greatly exaggerated in legends. For example, legend has it that upon reaching India, In reality, while Alexander did travel a great deal, he did not travel further west than
ancient Libya and did not travel further east than the fringes of India. According to historians, Alexander invaded India following his desire to reach the "ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea". However, when he reached the
Hyphasis River in the
Punjab in 326 BC, his army nearly
mutinied and refused to march further east, exhausted by years of campaigning. Alexander's desire to reach "the ends of the Earth" was instilled by his tutor
Aristotle: This view of the world taught by Aristotle and followed by Alexander is apparent in Aristotle's
Meteorologica, a treatise on earth sciences where he discusses the "length" and "width" of "the inhabited earth". However, Aristotle knew that the Earth is spherical and even provided observational proof of this fact. Aristotle's cosmological view was that the Earth is round but he prescribed to the notion of an "inhabited Earth", surrounded by the Ocean, and an "uninhabited Earth" (though exactly how much of this was understood by his student Alexander the Great is not known). ==Arabic and Islamic depictions of Alexander the Great==