Alexander the Great's Flying Machine: an Iconographic

doi: 10.2143/AWE.14.0.3108199 AWE 14 (2015) 313-322 ALEXANDER THE GREAT’S FLYING MACHINE: AN ICONOGRAPHIC STUDY JOHN BOARDMAN Abstract The iconography for Alexander’s flying machine, as described in the Alexander Romance, spread throughout Christian Europe. The notion and the elements of the iconography can, however, be traced in early Mesopotamia, Syria/Palestine, Roman and notably Sasanian art. Oxford’s Alfred Jewel may also be a candidate. In common with many leaders of men, emperors or generals, Alexander the Great attracted a number of stories about his life and works which are purely fictional, many of them wholly fantastic. In the case of Alexander it was a matter of extending his life and exploits beyond the completion of his Eastern expedition, in which he destroyed the Persian empire and stood at the gates of India, and his death in Babylon shortly thereafter, in 323 BC. He had wanted to go on east but his troops had had more than enough of marching and fighting, and he had to turn back. However, imaginative authors gave him an extension of life and experiences in the East, in the course of which he was able to visit its many imaginary creatures (for example skiapods – men with one large foot which they used to shade their heads – a notion inspired by yoga positions), giant birds that could lift a camel (a golden eagle can lift a calf), and other oriental wonders, which continued to be the source for stories popular from antiquity (Ctesias in the 5th century BC)1 through the Middle Ages in Europe and the East – the world of Sir John de Mandeville, Sindbad the Sailor, Marco Polo and others. The stories probably began soon after Alexander’s death, but only in centuries AD did they certainly receive any literary form, and then they proliferate and vary considerably in detail. The first Greek version seems to be of the 3rd century AD and is ascribed to a Ps.-Callisthenes, borrowing the name of a historian at Alexander’s court. There were many translations and other versions, in Armenian, Greek, etc. In recent years they have been the subject of several important books by Richard Stoneman.2 The story which is the subject of this essay also enjoyed an extensive iconography in the Middle Ages in all of Europe, includ- ing Britain. It is one that tells of Alexander’s flight, which he undertook with the object of viewing the whole world from a great height. Its companion story is of his descent in a diving bell to view the floors of the ocean. The iconography of the flight has been carefully studied in a book by Victor Schmidt.3 This essay is devoted to an attempt to unravel earlier 1 Nichols 2011. 2 Notably Stoneman 1991; 1994. 3 Schmidt 1995. 97901.indb 313 14/09/15 09:44 314 J. BOARDMAN iconographic conventions which may have contributed to its later form in European mediaeval art. The essence of the story is that Alexander provided himself with a basket or seat to which were attached two large birds. These were persuaded to carry him upwards by pieces of meat held by Alexander on sticks over their heads, always just out of reach. In the iconography other winged creatures could be so employed, notably griffins – the lion/eagle monsters with very early Eastern associations in literature and art, and enthusiastically adapted and adopted by the classical world. Alexander is generally placed on a throne or stool rather than in a basket or cage. A good and typical mediaeval example is the group which appears on a floor mosaic in the 12th-century Cattedrale dell’Annunziata at Otranto, where Alexander is named, is seated on a stool, and the creatures are griffins (Fig. 1).4 Another, an 11th-century relief on St. Mark’s in Venice (Fig. 2), has him in a chariot, which is closer to the ‘Byzantine’ tradition for the subject, and will seem equally relevant to the story of the evolution of its iconography.5 The assumption has been that the story and the iconography are altogether late inven- tions. This is most probably true, but I suspect that elements in both may derive from older traditions in Mesopotamia, Persia and Phoenicia, where nothing like the Alexander story is involved, but where there are precedents for many details and compositions – notably, the image of a deity feeding creatures set at either side of him/her, the use of thrones whose sides are in the form of winged creatures or monsters, and the desirability of lifting a king or deity to the heavens. The notion that a ruler or god might fly, with or without animal aid, was commonplace in antiquity. Thus, at Nineveh in the 7th century BC, Eteanna could be lifted to heaven by an eagle to view the world and Ocean, a story later also attributed to the earlier king/hero Gilgamesh. In Greek art and myth we have the story of Zeus’ eagle carrying off Ganymede for his master, a subject and scheme later borrowed in Indian art with the Garuda eagle. We start with the feeding. As early as the 4th millennium BC an Uruk cylinder seal shows a god holding two long flowering branches on which two bulls feed (Fig. 3).6 A 15th- century BC Middle Assyrian relief from Assur shows a mountain deity (to judge from the patterning of his headdress) holding two short branches with foliage and fruit to either side, with small goats climbing on them and feeding (Fig. 4).7 The posture with the branches set obliquely is that commonly adopted for holding sceptres both in the Near East and Egypt, often with the forearms crossed. The overall scheme is obviously that commonly adopted for the ‘Master…’ or ‘Mistress of Animals’, of many periods and sources, where the pose demonstrates the deity’s command over the wild creatures or monsters which stand at either side, on leads or held by the deity. Later, towards the end of the Bronze Age, there is an ivory relief, sometimes regarded as Mycenaean, from the port of Ugarit at Minet-el Beida (Syria), where a goddess standing on a mountain holds fronds which are being nibbled by rampant attendant goats (Fig. 5).8 4 Schmidt 1995, 175, fig.1. 5 Schmidt 1995, 177, fig. 13; and 18–19 for the ‘Byzantine tradition’ of the griffin chariot. 6 Wicke 2013, 20–21, figs. 10–12. 7 Orthmann 1975, pl. 194. 8 Harden 1963, pl. 60. 97901.indb 314 14/09/15 09:44 ALEXANDER THE GREAT’S FLYING MACHINE 315 Fig. 1: Otranto, Cathedral, painted wall. Fig. 2: St Mark’s, Venice, relief. Fig. 3: Cylinder seal, Fig. 4: Relief from Assur. Berlin, Vorderasiatische Museum. Berlin, Vorderasiatische Museum. 97901.indb 315 14/09/15 09:44 316 J. BOARDMAN Fig. 5: Ivory relief Fig. 6: Relief from Khorsabad, from Minet el-Beida. London, British Museum. For analogies to the winged creatures at either side of Alexander’s seat we may look for thrones whose arms and sides are fashioned as animals. Lion-paw feet for furniture had a long history in the Near East, animal-heads are obvious decoration for the ends of throne arms, and the sweep of wings can readily fit the combination of arm and throne-back. Mesopotamia seldom places a whole creature here – a Khorsabad relief in the British Museum has a horse below the armrest (Fig. 6). In Egypt it is commonly just the lion or sphinx head and sometimes a leg, seldom the whole body. A wooden fragment in London, probably from Egypt, has just the head and leg.9 Whole winged creatures appear relatively late, especially in the Phoenician sphere (West as well as East), and are commonly sphinxes flanking the throne of a deity, male or female. There are several stone and ivory reliefs and numerous scarab intaglios with such thrones, and these take us down to the 5th/4th centuries BC. Examples are on the Ahiram sarcophagus of the 10th century BC,10 an ivory from Megiddo (Fig. 7), and, much later, a typical 5th-century scarab scene on Fig. 8.11 In the Greek world the scheme is less familiar, but winged beasts commonly draw divine chariots. Medea’s chariot is drawn by winged snakes, and in Etruria, shown frontally on a 3rd-century BC urn, the group is very evocative of flight.12 9 Curtis 2000, fig. 66. 10 Harden 1963, pl. 15; from Byblos, in Beirut; cf. pl. 41, for Baal, in Tunis Museum. 11 Boardman 2003, notably examples on pls. 16, 17, 54, 55, and see p. 62. On seats with zoo- morphic side-members, see Gubel 1987, 37–84. 12 In the Vatican: ThesCRA VIII, pl. 63, Cat. 3; LIMC VI, Medeia no. 41. 97901.indb 316 14/09/15 09:44 ALEXANDER THE GREAT’S FLYING MACHINE 317 Fig. 7: Ivory from Megiddo. Jerusalem, Rockefeller Museum. All these elements could combine to produce an image of a deity being lifted by winged creatures attached to his seat and being fed to induce flight, but for specific examples which represent an Alexander in such a position we have to wait for Dark Age Europe. An inter- mediary can, I think, be found, partly in the arts of the later Classical period in the Mediter- ranean world, but especially in the arts of Sasanian Persia which had some influence on early Byzantine art, closer to the period of the appearance of Alexander’s flight in Europe.

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