'S JOURNEY IN PICTURES

0. ALEXANDER'S JOURNEY IN PICTURES - Story Preface

1. LEARNING FROM ARISTOTLE

2. THE YOUNG ALEXANDER

3. ALEXANDER'S HOMETOWN

4. ASSASSINATION OF II

5. DISCOVERY OF PHILIP'S TOMB

6. ROYAL TREASURES

7. ALEXANDER'S BEQUEST

8. ALEXANDER'S EARLY CONQUESTS

9. CHASING DARIUS III

10. GAUGAMELA AND THE END OF DARIUS

11. ELEPHANTS IN WAR

12. VICTORY IN INDIA

13. GOING HOME

14. ALEXANDER'S DEATH

15. ALEXANDER'S JOURNEY IN PICTURES

16. THE REST OF THE STORY

It is said that conquered the entire known world. That, of course, is incorrect since Alexander was unaware of significant parts of the actual known world. This map image depicts the extent of the conquests he had achieved by 323 BC. Online, via SPC Humanities. Click on the image for a better view. Alexander took his troops to the edge of the world as he knew it. Today, many of the towns and countries known to the Macedonians still exist but are called by different names. This chapter will take you on a virtual tour to visit some of the places Alexander conquered. Tyre - On the , in today's Lebanon, the town is also known as Sur.

Gaza - has some Palestinian autonomy and Israeli control of its airspace and maritime access. During ancient times Gaza, situated on the coastal highway between Egypt and Mesopotamia, was an important commercial and military center. Today the Gaza Strip has limited Palestinian autonomy and Israeli control.

Alexandria (Egypt) - Known today as both Alexandria and El Iskandariya, this still-thriving city on the Mediterranean Sea is Egypt's second-largest. It was once home to the famous library (whose destruction remains a mystery) and the Pharos Lighthouse, a wonder of the ancient world before it was destroyed by an earthquake.

Gaugamela - (Tel Gomel, Iraq) - The scene of this famous battle is somewhere northeast of the Tigris River between the northern Iraqi town of Arbela (known as Erbil today) and Mosul (Al Mawsil, Iraq).

Ecbatana - Capital of the ancient Median empire (known today as Hamadan, ), it is the place where (Alexander's close friend and leader of the Macedonian cavalry) died. It is also the place from which orders were given to kill , one of Alexander's best generals. - Situated north of Al Hillah, Iraq, this famous city was the capital of the ancient Babylonian empire, site of the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (another wonder of the ancient world). It is also the place where Alexander died.

Persepolis - Site of awesome ruins and known today as Marvdasht, Iran (northeast of Shiraz), this city was the magnificent capital of the Persian empire until it was sacked by Alexander the Great.

Susa - This ancient city, important to Darius III and his ancestors, is east of Babylon.

Maracanda - Known today as Samarkand, Uzbekhistan, it was in a palace in this town where Alexander killed (most likely accidentally) his friend Clitus.

Oxus River - Known today as the Amu Darya River, this , and north of it, was the place of key Alexander conquests.

Alexandria Eschate - One of the many towns Alexander founded and named after himself is now known as Khujand (on the Syr-Darya River in today's Tajikistan).

Alexandria - Another town (from the former Persian empire) which Alexander named, it is known today as Kandahar, Afghanistan (scene of considerable fighting in the Second Gulf War).

Alexandria on the Oxus - Today this place is known as Ai Khanum, Afghanistan.

Gedrosian - In this inhospitable desert, located today in Baluchistan, Iran/ - look at the bottom of the linked map - an extraordinary number of Alexander's men died from deplorable conditions.

Paropamisus Range - Moving east, Alexander and his men reached the difficult and imposing Hindu- Mountains. Snow was the least of their worries as they met, and defeated, human and natural enemies.

Hydaspes River - Known today as the Jhelum River in Pakistan, this is the site of the famous battle of the Hydaspes in which Alexander's men battled, and conquered, and his elephants.

Bactra/Zariaspa - Balkh (close to the current city of Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan) is the oldest town in that country and was the capital of ancient .

Bactria/Sogdiana - This territory, so prominent in the story of Alexander, currently encompasses land in Afghanistan, Uzbekhistan and Tajikistan. Alexander's wife, Roxane, was from Bactria.

Roxane was expecting Alexander's child when her husband died. What happened to her, and her baby boy?

See Alignments to State and Common Core standards for this story online at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/AcademicAlignment/ALEXANDER-S-JOURNEY-IN-PICTURES-Alexander-the-G reat See Learning Tasks for this story online at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/AcademicActivities/ALEXANDER-S-JOURNEY-IN-PICTURES-Alexander-the-Gr eat

Media Stream The World as Alexander Knew It Image online via Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/The-World-as-Alexander-Knew-It

Ruins at Tyre Photo of ancient Tyre by Petteri Sulonen, online via Flickr. LICENSE: CC BY 2.0 View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Ruins-at-Tyre

Lebanon - Location in the Map image online, courtesy CIA. PD View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Lebanon-Location-in-the-Middle-East

Gaza - Aerial View Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Gaza-Aerial-View

Gaza - Map Locator Image online, courtesy CIA World Fact Book. PD View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Gaza-Map-Locator

Gaza - View from Space Image online, courtesy NASA/JPL. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Gaza-View-from-Space

Gaza - Contemporary Map Image, described above, online via Euro Med Aviation. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Gaza-Contemporary-Map Alexandria, Egypt - Contemporary View Image online, courtesy Mideast Traveling.net View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Alexandria-Egypt-Contemporary-View

Pharos Lighthouse Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Pharos-Lighthouse

Pharos Lighthouse - Ruins Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Pharos-Lighthouse-Ruins

Gaugamela - Map Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Gaugamela-Map

View of Northern Iraq Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/View-of-Northern-Iraq

Tigris River - Map Locator Image online via Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Tigris-River-Map-Locator

Gaugamela - Contemporary View Image, described above, onlina via American Schools of Oriental Research. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Gaugamela-Contemporary-View

Ai Khanum Image, described above, online courtesy University of Texas at Austin. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Ai-Khanum

Alexandria Arachosia - Today's Kandahar Map image online via University of Texas at Austin. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Alexandria-Arachosia-Today-s-Kandahar Ancient Afghanistan Image online via The Archive of Palden Jenkins. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Ancient-Afghanistan

Persepolis - Awesome Ruins Image online via Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran Monte Video. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Persepolis-Awesome-Ruins

Ancient Babylon Image online via Walton County School District (Georgia). View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Ancient-Babylon

Alexander the Great Enters Babylon Image, described above, online courtesy Wikimedia Commons. PD View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Alexander-the-Great-Enters-Babylon Gedrosian Desert - Panoramic View The Gedrosian Desert can be a very dangerous place. Its inhospitable environment has caused trouble, for people, for thousands of years. Alexander the Great—a brilliant military strategist—was no exception: • Why did Alexander the Great have his troops go through the Gedrosian Desert? • Didn’t he realize that his men, plus the people who traveled with them, could run-out of food and water? • Why undertake such an expedition, given its knowable risks? We can go back in time, to the oldest-surviving source on Alexander, to examine those issues. Relying on sources which are lost today, Arrian of Nicomedia (who lived during the Roman era, likely between c 86 and c 160 AD) wrote a military history of Alexander. It is called the Anabasis Alexandri (“The Expeditions [or Campaigns] of Alexander).”

Hereafter is an excerpt of the Anabasis, section 6.24.1-26.5 (online courtesy Livius.org), regardings Alexander's decisions about crossing the Gedrosian. The translation (from the Greek) is by Aubrey de Sélincourt: The next objective was the capital town of , situated in a district named Pura. The march thither from Oria occupied in all sixty days. Most historians of Alexander's campaigns have stated that the sufferings of his men on that march were out of all proportion greater than anything they had had to endure in .

Alexander did not choose that route because he was unaware of the difficulties it would involve ( is our one authority for this); he chose it because, apart from [the legendary queen] Semiramis on her retreat from India, no man, to his knowledge, had ever before succeeded in bringing an army safely through.

Even Semiramis, according to local tradition, got through with no more than twenty survivors, and Cyrus, son of Cambyses, with only seven - for it is a fact that Cyrus came here with the intention of invading India, but found the going so bad and the country so wild and barren that he lost nearly all his men before he could do so.

Alexander heard these old stories; they inspired him to go one better than Cyrus and Semiramis, and that was the reason, combined with the hope of being able to keep contact with the fleet and procure supplies for it, why, according to Nearchus, he marched by that route.

The result was disastrous: the blazing heat and the lack of water caused innumerable casualties, especially among the animals, most of which died of thirst or from the effects of the deep, burning, sun-baked sand. Sometimes they met with lofty hills of sand - loose, deep sand, into which they sank as if it were mud or untrodden snow; sometimes, climbing or descending, the mules and horses suffered even greater distress from the uneven and treacherous surface of the track.

Not the least hardship was the varying length of the marches, as the fact that they never knew when they would find water made regular, normal marches impossible. It was not so bad when they found water in the morning after covering the requisite distance during the night; but when there was still further to go, and they found themselves plodding on and on as the day advanced, the double distress of heat and raging thirst was almost intolerable.

Casualties among the animals were very numerous; indeed, most of them perished. Often they were killed deliberately by the men, who used to put their heads together and agree to butcher the mules and horses, whenever supplies gave out, and then eat their flesh and pretend they had died of thirst or exhaustion.

As every man was involved, and the general distress was so great, there was no one to bring actual evidence of this crime, though Alexander himself was not unaware of what was going on; he realized, however, that the only way to deal with the situation was to feign ignorance, which would be better than to let the men feel that he connived at their breach of discipline.

It was, moreover, no easy task, when men were sick or fell exhausted in their tracks, to get them along with the rest; for there were no transport animals left and even the wagons were being continually broken up as it became more and more impossible to drag them through the deep sand.

In the earlier stages of the march they had often been prevented for this reason from taking the shortest route and compelled to seek a longer one which was more practicable for the teams. So there was nothing for it but to leave the sick by the way, and any man rendered incapable by exhaustion or thirst or sunstroke.

No one could give them a helping hand; no one could stay behind to ease their sufferings, for the essential thing was to get on with all possible speed, and the effort to save the army as a whole inevitably took precedence over the suffering of individual men.

Most of the marching was at night, and many men would fall asleep in their tracks; the few who had strength left to do so followed the army when they woke up again, and got safe through; but the greater number perished - poor castaways in the ocean of sand.

There was yet another disaster, perhaps the worst for all concerned, men, horses, and mules.

In Gedrosia, as in India, it rains heavily during the monsoon; the rain falls not on the plains but on the mountains, the summits of which arrest the clouds carried thither by the wind and cause them to condense in rain. It so happened that the army bivouacked by a small stream, for the sake of the water it afforded, and about the second watch of the night it was suddenly swollen by rain.

The actual rain was falling far away out of sight, but the stream nevertheless grew into such a torrent that it drowned most of the camp-followers' women and children and swept away the royal tent with everything it contained, and all the surviving animals, while the troops themselves barely managed to escape, saving nothing but their weapons - and not even all of those.

Another trouble was, that when plenty of water happened to be found after a hot and thirsty march, most of the men drank so immoderately that the result was fatal to them, and for this reason Alexander usually made his halts a couple of miles or so from water, to stop his men from flinging themselves indiscriminately upon it to their own destruction and that of their hearts, and to prevent those who had least self-control from plunging right into the spring or stream, or whatever it was, and so spoiling the water for the others. Many of the people (and animals) who accompanied Alexander through the Gedrosian Desert did not survive. Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Gedrosian-Desert-Panoramic-View Elephants against Alexander - Battle at Hydaspes River Image depicting the artifact, described above, now maintained by the British Museum in London. Photo by Jona Lendering, online via Livius.org. License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Elephants-against-Alexander-Battle-at-Hydaspes-River

Gedrosia - Map Locator This map depicts the location of the Gedrosian Desert which presented so many challenges to Alexander the Great and his forces.

Today, the general area is known as (Baluchistan), with the previously-called "Gedrosian Desert" in the southern part of Balochistan. Much of this region is located in today’s Pakistan.

We learn more about its names (and location) from Encyclopedia Iranica: GEDROSIA (or Kedrosia), a place-name known only from Classical sources. In the Alexander biographies and later geographies the name was used to denote much of present-day southern Baluchistan in south Pakistan and southeast Persia.

...Arrian [an ancient chronicler using even-more ancient sources to write about Alexander] says that it took Alexander sixty days to traverse Gedrosia from east to west...The coast of Gedrosia was described by Nearchos, Alexander’s admiral, whose account has partly survived in Arrian’s Indica (pp. 20 ff.).

Southern Baluchistan is still a sparsely populated area. There is a general lack of water, and this situation, judging from Alexander’s problems crossing Baluchistan, cannot have been much different in ancient times.

It is therefore perhaps not so surprising that the name of Gedrosia is never mentioned in Achaemenid sources; instead we find the name of (e.g., DB 1.17), which covered much of the coastline along the Persian Gulf and the . It is likely that both names indicate the same region.

The center of Gedrosia, and its capital Pura, cannot be located with certainty, but it is clear from the Alexander biographies that it lay west of the main Gedrosian deserts. It should therefore be placed in Persian Baluchistan, possibly in the Bampur oasis. Isn't it interesting that thousands of years later, the same type of conditions which Alexander and his men faced—in the Gedrosian Desert—still exist? Click on the image for a better view. Image online via Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Gedrosia-Map-Locator

Hamadan, Iran - Ecbatana, Ancient Image, described above, depicting a photo by Marco Prins. Online via Livius.org. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Hamadan-Iran-Ecbatana-Ancient-Media

Hindu-Kush Mountains Image of the , online via Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Hindu-Kush-Mountains

Gedrosian Desert - Inhospitable Area Image online via Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Gedrosian-Desert-Inhospitable-Area

Jhelum River Image online via Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Jhelum-River Al Hillah, Iraq - Map Locator Image online via Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Al-Hillah-Iraq-Map-Locator

Alexander the Great - Campaigns Image online via Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Alexander-the-Great-Campaigns

Shiraz, Near Persepolis - Map Locator Image online via Wikipedia. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Shiraz-Near-Persepolis-Map-Locator

Tajikistan - Map Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Tajikistan-Map

Baluchistan Area of Pakistan - Map Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Baluchistan-Area-of-Pakistan-Map

Mosul Iraq - Map Locator Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Mosul-Iraq-Map-Locator

Map of Afghanistan Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Map-of-Afghanistan

Map of Alexander's Campaigns Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Map-of-Alexander-s-Campaigns Ruins at Persepolis One of the world's most-treasured archaeological sites is Persepolis, located in today's Iran. Not only was Persepolis an important place for ancient Persians, it so awed Alexander the Great that he ordered his men to stop destroying its impressive buildings and other structures. This image depicts remains in Persepolis. Image online via Iran Chamber.com View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Ruins-at-Persepolis

Ruins of Persepolis This image depicts the archaeological wonders at Persepolis, the great Persian city - situated in today’s Iran - which Darius I begin to build, circa 512 B.C.

Among its limestone palaces, and red-cedar ceilings, were walls covered with silk. Stones, in the city, were laid without mortar and were joined by iron bolts.

The town was massively damaged by the troops of Alexander the Great, around 331 B.C. Image online via Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Ruins-of-Persepolis

Syr Darya River Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Syr-Darya-River

Kandahar - Area View Image online, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Kandahar-Area-View

Khujand - Area View Image online via Wikimedia Commons. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Khujand-Area-View

Hydaspes River Image online, courtesy the livius.org website. View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Hydaspes-River0

Afghanistan - War Damage View this asset at: http://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Afghanistan-War-Damage

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