Religiousand THeology 1ICS PDF

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cloak on the sarcophagus in a gesture of grief, he announced that he was a reincarnation of Alexander. He had the same twist of the neck and out-ofkilter eyes. When Alexandrians scoffed, he raised a detachment of pseudoMacedonian companions to rampage through the streets and butcher them. He also enclosed the Soma with high walls and watchtowers, turning it into a fort. In 264 a rebellious Roman general took refuge there, and the ensuing siege may have damaged Alexander’s chapel. More destruction followed, and by the 300s little of the Soma survived.39 Then came two cataclysms, Christianity and the tidal wave of 365. If the new religion did not efface what remained, the wave did, and around the year 400 a Christian author mocked the pagan gods by asking, “Where is the tomb of Alexander? Show me. On what day did he die? Tell me.” The tomb was gone, and the annual celebrations held on the day of his death had ceased.40 Yet Alexander was not quite dead. Centuries later, Muslims venerated him in a chapel tha one pilgrim described as being amid the ruins in the middle of the city. A small shrine marked the place where worshippers thought Alexander lay buried. They esteemed Alexander as a prophet described in the eighteenth book of the Koran. They asked him for blessings, brought him votives, and celebrated the anniversary of his death with prayers and a procession, customary honors for a prophet or a saint. In the

1880s an Egyptian government bent on westernizing the city demolished the chapel and the veneration of Alexander along with it.41 Alexander’s body has never been found.42 z 262 soldier, priest, and god in the eighteenth book (or sura) of the Koran, Alexander appears as the prophet called “the two-horned man.” The shrine at Siwah conceived Amon this way, and Alexander wore horns to imitate Amon. Coins spread this image of Alexander throughout the Near East. Many Muslim writers knew about it. One called a mosque at Alexandria “the mosque of the two-horned man.”43 A few Muslim authorities identify “the two-horned man,” or Dhul Qarnayn, as Cyrus the Great and not Alexander. Either is plausible. The...