The Temple of the Oracle, perched high on one of the four sandy hills that rise like termite mounds from the green Siwan depression, reflected perfectly in Lake Zeitun’s still waters. During the lifetime of Alexander the Great, 2,333 years ago, this temple had been the home of the most powerful and wisest seer known to the ancient world. So powerful, in fact, that the ambitious Macedonian King, shortly after his conquest of Egypt, had undertaken a perilous eight day hike from the Mediterranean coast across the stony northern Sahara in order to ask a few choice questions.

After 5 days in the desert I felt exhausted and thirsty, as Alexander too must have done, as I followed his route up the outer stone steps and beneath the heavy wooden beams encased with mud which held up the ceiling of the dark entrance passage. Approaching the Inner Sanctuary I noticed that this wasn’t like other Egyptian temples. There was no guard, no entrance fee, and no crowds. Just me, kneeling in the same spot as Alexander. Here, it is said, he asked the questions that he’d risked his life for - ‘Who murdered my father?’ and, perhaps most importantly, ‘Am I the Son of God, and thus ruler of the world?’

Alexander, referred to as Dhul-Qarnayn (the two-horned), is mentioned often in the Koran. The Book tells of his encounters with infidels (unbelievers), his journey with Al-Khidr, his advisor, to find the water of life, and of him building a great barrier between two mountains to protect the people against the legions of the devil. And in later myths he turns into the Arab conqueror of Spain, Musa Ibn Nusayr and stars in the 1001 Nights Tales where he captures the fabled Copper City. Even though he was an out and out pagan by official Islamic standards it is not surprising to find Alexander so venerated by Muslims when you consider the fact that his mother, his major influence, was a high priestess of a snake cult (Alexander’s father, Philip, once caught her in bed with a snake). After all, the snake, a potent symbol of rebirth due to the fact that it sheds its skin yearly and emerges ‘new’ again, was, in ancient ritual, like the crescent, just another symbol for the greatest deity of all Arabia; Allah, the moon God turned Muslim deity. And as for Alexander’s’ fabled ‘two-horned’ appearance, that is another, but entirely connected, story.

The ‘official’ explanation as to why he was known as the ‘two-horned’, elaborated on by the historian Josephus, begins with Alexander entering Jerusalem at the beginning of his campaign and, instead of raiding the temple, bowing down reverently before the high priest. When asked by his companion Parmenio why he was acting in such an un-kingly manner he replied,

‘I do not adore the high priest himself but the God who has honoured him with office. I saw this very person in a dream, dressed exactly as now, while I was in Dios in Macedonia. In my dream I was debating with myself how I might conquer Asia, and this man exhorted me not to delay. I was to pass boldly with my army across the narrow sea, for his God would march before me and help me to defeat the Persians. So I am now convinced that Jehovah is with me and will lead my armies to victory.’

The high priest then showed Alexander the prophecy in the Book of Daniel, referring to him as the ‘two-horned’ king and promising him the lands of the East, and subsequently, the story ends, he had himself pictured on his coins forever more with two bull horns growing out of his helmet. 

But the significance of bulls horns in the ancient world stretches much further back than the time of Judaism and Alexander. The earliest record of bull worship comes in the form of rock paintings by the Aurignalian people at sites in Domboshawa in Zimbabwe and Cogul in Spain, dated around 20,000 B.C. At Catal Huyuk in Turkey, the site of the earliest known human community which flourished around 9,500 years ago, buildings recognised as shrines have been uncovered decorated with paintings of bulls. And European art from around 6,000 years ago shows that the horns’ crescent shape was used, alongside crosses and snakes, as a symbol of the moon goddess (the English word ‘Bull’ actually derives from ‘Baal’, the title of El/Jehovah/Allah the Moon God’s son). In the Roman world Mithra, the bull god, was worshipped in temples from Wales to Persia and was considered so important that Jesus’ followers adopted the Mithran custom of celebrating their gods’ divinity with meals of bread and wine. And in Pamplona the bull cult persists to the modern day in the annual ‘running of the bulls’, a remnant of a festival bought over from Crete, the major centre of Mediterranean Bull worship (which spawned the legend of the half man, half bull Minotaur,) where bulls were allowed to show their power by running riot, chasing and killing men. So by placing horns on Alexander’s’ head his entourage were not only fulfilling the prophecies elaborated upon in the Old Testament, but also crowning him the head of all religions, and the living incarnation of the great Moon God on earth.

At the Mountain of the Dead I met Mohammed Khalid, a master of seven languages, who was having his first day as translator. His right eye was blinded by cataracts and his left a mess of red weeping sores, pestered permanently by flies.

‘Why don’t you wear a sun hat?’ I asked, looking at his burnt and peeling light skinned face.

‘Never, hats remind me of my years in the navy. I went to merchant college in Liverpool you know, before sailing all over the world as a captain. What do you do to earn money?’

‘Anything really. I write travel articles at the moment.’

‘Are you any good?’

‘Your grammar is crap,’ my first editor had told me three years earlier, ‘either give up travel writing or start having more interesting journeys.’ I’d put the phone down and a month later had walked across part of West Asia, an epic five hundred mile trip over three mountain ranges through a land ravaged by recent earthquakes.

‘The prose is still crap,’ the editor had said after reading my account of the adventure, ‘but I’ll publish it. It’s twice as exciting as anything else I’ve read this month.’ Luckily, I’d been in print ever since. 

‘I guess I’m pretty average.’ I said to Mohammed.

‘Ever done an honest days work?’

‘Some.’ I said. ‘I’ve worked as a salesman, a delivery driver, a bag designer, a plumber, a painter and on the fairgrounds. Whether you call those honest or not though is a different matter.’ He reached for my hands and inspected the palms.

‘Women’s hands,’ he announced with a slight smile before leading me off, together with the tomb guardian, to explore the Greek catacombs burrowed out of the hillside.

The best preserved was that of Si-Amun, a trader buried around 200 B.C., whose walls still shone with flashes of dark red, blue and purple.

‘No flash photo!’ warned Mohammed, tapping the ancient masterpieces with his palm stick so firmly that pieces of the painted plaster chipped away. Noticing my interest in the skeletons and mummies that still lay in situ he said,

‘If you want one you can take it.’

‘But won’t it be missed?’ I replied.

‘No, there are hundreds here.’

‘But I wouldn’t get it through the airport!’ I said, searching for a kind way to say that under no circumstances did I want one of this man’s prize relics, which I believed should stay in the tombs that the humans who once inhabited the bodies carved for them.

‘You can have it for £20. You could easily hide it in your bag.’ Strange, I was prohibited from using flash in the tombs, but I could rob them, no problem.

Khalid announced that he had been the translator on the recent dig for the tomb of Alexander the Great. He said that the letters ALANDR M, which may once have read ‘Alexander of Macedonia’ in Greek, was written on the side of the coffin.

‘The other letters had been chipped away.’

‘Recently?’ I asked.

‘No, it was ancient work. Inside was a skeleton, no shield, sword or jewels, just a skeleton.’

‘Was it Alexander?’

‘There are many tombs in the area.’ Khalid said, sweeping his right hand over the view of palms and sandy hills below us. ‘Some pharonic, some Roman, some even contain the dead from the second world war…when I was clearing mines at El Alamein in the 1970’s, I found a tobacco tin containing an Omega watch and an old British £20 note. The watch still worked so I took it to a dealer in Cairo and he offered me £1000 in my hand right there, and that, in 1976, was a lot of money. I still have the watch.’

‘But why don’t the Egyptians say it is Alexander’s’ tomb then?’ I went on, eager to steer a reminiscing old man back on track and get the full Alexander story. ‘They could make a lot of money from tourists if they did.’

‘The Greek lady running the dig made a mistake. When she found the tomb she told the Greek authorities, but not the Egyptian. We had the Greek cultural minister and representatives from Athens and Salonica universities here to visit, but nobody from Cairo was invited.’

‘So the Egyptians were angry?’

‘Yes, the Greeks had a five year digging permit but the Egyptians were so angry at not being kept informed that they closed them down before they’d finished. The lady has taken them to court. They’ve been arguing for four years now. And also the German and French archaeologists in Alexandria who are working on their own ‘Find Alexander’s Tomb’ projects said it was not the tomb.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, there are rumours that Alexander’s body has been seen intact in its coffin in some underground chamber in Alexandria, so I suppose they are trying to find that. But also, they don’t want their research grants to be cut I suppose. And, imagine, if a man has devoted his life to finding the tomb, he is not going to be happy, or co-operative, if somebody, a Greek woman, finds it before him.’

History tells us that just before Alexander died in Babylon (the city whose name meant ‘Gate of the Bull’) he ordered that he be buried in Siwa, a sign that he held the place in high regard, over and above everywhere he’d conquered from Macedonia to India. But his body was waylaid in Memphis by his ex-general, and future Pharaoh of Egypt, Ptolemy, and sent to Alexandria instead. There, it is said, it was wrapped in gold and placed in a glass coffin in a vast tomb at the crossroads in the city centre, so that Alexander could be it’s protective deity. The tomb then became a place of pilgrimage for seven hundred years until the Christian Emperor Justinian banned the worship of idols.

I left Khalid and spent an easy afternoon by the shore of Lake Siwa letting my mind ponder upon the mystery. The legend goes on to explain that after Justinian made his decree Alexander’s worshippers exhumed the body and bought it to it’s rightful resting place in Siwa where it has remained hidden to this day. The current authorities agree with this legend, but add that despite over one hundred scientific searches the tomb remains undiscovered. Liana Sovaltzi, however, the Greek lady leading the latest Siwan Alexander dig, has a different opinion.

She says that the resemblance between the architectural style of the tomb that she has found at Maraki, a village near Siwa, and that of Alexander’s father, Philip, in Macedonia, is striking, except that the Siwan tomb, at fifty one metres long, is much larger. Also, inscriptions at the tombs show Alexander’s emblem, an eight pointed star, and a script that reads, intriguingly, ‘The first and most unique of all, he who drunk the poison.’ Records tell us that Alexander passed into a coma after a mammoth drinking session and never recovered, but the disease that claimed his life remained undiagnosed. Was it malaria, as many scholars’ state? Had his generals poisoned him? Or did he commit ritual suicide?

By the age of thirty two Alexander had conquered the world, achieved everything he could possibly imagine, and, being a highly intelligent man, must have perceived that since life was now going to be downhill all the way he had to get out quickly if he wished for his legendary status to remain intact. His soldiers had revolted, his generals were squabbling and angry with him for decreeing that all of them should marry Persian women (who were considered of a lower class at the time and unfit to be the wives of a Macedonian), and his dearest friends had passed on, some at the point of his own sword whilst he was drunk. Alexander may have been a living god, an immortal, but he was also infected with a fatal trio of diseases. Depression, alcoholism, and pothos (an overwhelming desire to press on, no matter what the consequences, into the unknown).

‘What would be a fitting way for a God to leave this Earth?’ I can imagine him thinking. ‘I wish to join my loved ones in sampling the afterlife. No mortal should kill me, but maybe…’

Bulls blood, though believed by the Greeks to be an excellent fertiliser when diluted, was thought to have been deadly poison when drank neat. Its potency claimed, among others, both parents of Jason (of Argonauts fame) and King Midas of Gordium. What better way for Alexander to escape the pain of life, and the stigma of cowardice that would accompany ordinary suicide, than by succumbing to a bottle of bulls’ blood, laced with real poison? History could never say he was struck down by a mortal blow for he, known as the ‘two-horned’ god himself, would be, in effect, committing ritual suicide with a draught of his own blood, taking himself out of this world via the Gate of the Bull (Babylon), and resuming his seat in the realm of Gods. He would forever be an immortal. It seems a far-fetched plan. But judging by the fact that he was worshipped as a God throughout the Middle East for at least seven hundred years after his death, and still is in modern day Macedonia, it appears to have been very successful.

Sovaltzi bases her theory not only on these inscriptions but also on the name of the area where the tomb is situated. ‘Maraki’, she states, derives from the word ‘Meirakion’, which in old Greek meant ‘the man who died young,’ a translation which her critics argue is not grammatically correct and thus pure fantasy. I considered the name, Maraki. Where had I heard that before? I flicked through the Bible. Yes, there it was. Not Maraki, but Malachi, which in Old Hebrew meant ‘God’s messenger’. Was this the real meaning of ‘Maraki’ that the archaeologists had failed to pick up on?

‘God’s Messenger’ would have been an apt description for Alexander. He’d not only liberated the Hebrews from the Persians and humbled himself before Jehovah but had also come to be regarded by certain Jews as a prophet, whose coming was foretold in the book of Daniel, and a Messiah. But why use Old Hebrew, when the language of the day was officially Latin?

Alexander’s followers wouldn’t want to alert the Emperor Justinian as to the new whereabouts of the remains, so would naturally disguise the location of the tomb using an older language alien to Latin speakers but known to worshippers, many of whom must have belonged to the city of Alexandrias’ large Greek speaking population. These people were not actually Greek themselves, but descendants of immigrants who had swept down as colonists shortly after Alexander had founded the city. They spoke Greek, and Latin, for everyday business, but for private, secret prayers they would have reverted to the tongue of their forefathers. These ancestors had hailed from Israel. The language they’d used was Old Hebrew.

The result of the court case between the Greek archaeologists and the Egyptian government would be decided upon by 2003, after which one side would continue digging up the village of Maraki. During 2001 Siwa had an average of five hundred visitors a month, an amount which Mahdi Hweiti, Siwa's tourist officer, believed to be sufficient. The Italian developers who’ve begun building two major hotels near Maraki have plans to increase this number to five hundred per DAY.

Nefta Oasis in Tunisia was once a small town paradise perched on the rim of a depression filled with running water and palm groves. Then the developers had been alerted to its potential and moved quickly to build five large hotels. A host of swimming pools and thousands of flush systems and showers had soon used up most of the natural water and left the depression so barren, the palm groves so dead and ugly, that after less than twenty years no tourists wanted to go near it any more. When I visited in 1997 Nefta wasn’t even left with the abundance of gardens that’d once provided its inhabitants with a livelihood, before tourists took a brief interest, and unemployment and disillusionment reigned. I’m sure Alexander would boil with anger and drive his ghostly armies forward mercilessly against this barbarian tribe, The Capitalists, if he knew what they planned to do to his beloved Siwa.

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