Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In the Qissat al-Iskandar, Alexander the Great is depicted as a civilizing hero and monotheist [4] that travels across the world, builds the Wall against Gog and Magog, searches for the Water of Life (Fountain of Youth), and encounters angels who give him a "wonder-stone" that both weighs more than any other stone but is also as light as dust. [5]
According to legend, Alexander went on pilgrimage to the Siwa Oasis, the sanctuary of the Greco-Egyptian deity Zeus Ammon in 331 BC. There, he was pronounced by the Oracle to be the son of Zeus Ammon, [2] allowing him to therefore have the Horns of Ammon, which themselves followed from Egyptian iconography of Ammon as a ram-headed god or, in his Greek-form, a man with ram horns. [3]
The text retains the essential plot from earlier romances, [2] and is a witness to common motifs of Alexander such as his horns. [3] Alexander the Great was first introduced into Ethiopic translation from the translations of the Bible into Ge'ez in the fifth and sixth centuries, as Alexander is indirectly alluded to in the Book of Daniel.
Philostratus the Elder in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana writes that in the army of Porus, there was an elephant who fought bravely against Alexander's army, and Alexander dedicated it to the Helios (Sun) and named it Ajax because he thought that such a great animal deserved a great name. The elephant had gold rings around its tusks and an ...
But the story showed where such a climb would lead, and proved that the great Alexander "was one of the greatest fools the world has ever seen". [ 10 ] Rice and Boardman have both argued that the figure on the Anglo-Saxon Alfred Jewel intended to represent this scene in order to represent the notion of one coming to knowledge through sight.
The Alexander Mosaic of Pompeii, depicting Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, wearing the linothorax [6] Beginning around 575 BC, artists in the Aegean often show a distinctive style of armour with a smooth piece wrapped around the chest, two flaps over the shoulders, and a skirt of flaps covering the hips and belly. [7]
Alexander is mentioned in the Zoroastrian Middle Persian work Arda Wiraz Nāmag as gizistag aleksandar ī hrōmāyīg, literally "Alexander the accursed, the Roman", [1] [2] [3] due to his conquest of the Achaemenid Persian Empire and the burning of its ceremonial capital Persepolis, which was holding the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism in its Royal Archives.
There is evidence to suggest that orally transmitted legends about Alexander the Great found their way to the Quran. [26] In the story of Dhu al-Qarnayn, "The Two-Horned One" (chapter al-Kahf, verse 83–94), Dhu al-Qarnayn is identified by most Western and traditional Muslim scholars as a reference to Alexander the Great. [27] [28] [29]