Circumnavigation of Africa: Alexanders plans in context of earlier attempts.

Alexanders return from India to Babylon marked the heyday of his power. Hailed as a victorious warrior and a great king, Alexander approached Babylon in splendour, already planning his next moves. All of them were cut short by his untimely death; today, a historian attempting to sieve facts from myths faces a near insurmountable obstacle. The scope of Alexanders conquests was such that imagination of many was aflame: nothing seemed impossible. A document said to be found in Alexanders chancellery provides a lengthy list of ambitious undertakings for the years to come: among others, one can enumerate construction of an immense fleet of warships, foundation of numerous temples, building a road via African coast of Mediterranean to the Pillars of Heracles and the subsequent conquest of lands it was to intersect1. A careful reader will note that the Macedonians focus shifted south- and westwards: now Africa was a land to subdue and incorporate into his already immense domain. An interest in Africa could be perceived as a natural extension of previous forays into Arabia: Alexander sent a number of naval expeditions that circumnavigated the Arabian Peninsula and he could have intended to found colonies on its arid coast2. At this point, certain sources indicate a curious development: Alexander was supposedly arranging an expedition to circumnavigate Africa3. For instance, Arrian states that after the return to Persepolis, Alexander was overcome by : he ached to sail down the rivers of Babylon into the Persian Gulf and turn westwards, circumnavigating the land of Ethiopians and Libyans until he

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Nawotka 379 Tarn 394-5 3 Tarn 395

entered the familiar waters of Mediterranean4. A later account of Plutarch notes as well Alexanders intent to sail the shores of Arabia and Africa until the navy entered into the Pillars from the West5. A short mention of the circumnavigation plans of Alexander is a point where history, geography and ideology form a dilemma, one enormously difficult to solve. Did Alexander truly mean to circumnavigate Africa? Did he have means to do so? Orwhat is perhaps the most important issuewas he following a certain tradition of accomplishments he wished to surpass? One attempting to answer these questions has to see Alexander as a successor of a long line of explorers who tried to circumnavigate Libya before him. The first extant account about African circumnavigation comes from Herodotus; the author relates how Necho, an Egyptian pharaoh, sent a group of Phoenician ships to sail around Africa, moving clockwise from the Red Sea basin6. During the journey, the sailors replenished their supplies: they wintered in a place, where they could sow the crops and harvest them. After three years, they supposedly returned through the Straits of Gibraltar. Herodotus doubts that this expedition has ever occurred, deriding the idea that the crew saw the sun on the right hand, or in the northern part of the sky. This side remark sparked a long debate among the scholars. Some believe that Phoenicians actually crossed the equator and completed the circle; yet, others claim that it would not be impossible to astronomically predict that particular observation and the sheer distance to cover makes the expedition nigh impossible7. Nevertheless, it should be noted that circumnavigating Africa clockwise does
Arrian, Anabasis 7.21.1-2. 5 Plut. Alex. 68.1 6 Herodotus, The Histories 4.42. If Necho of Herodotus is to be equated with Necho II, the alleged circumnavigation can be dated to ca. 600 BCE 7 There are many followers and opponents of the Necho circumnavigation theory. The first group consists of Law, Branigan, Lendering and Roller. The opponents are Mauny and Lloyd.
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not pose as many problems as an attempt to do it anticlockwise, because the dominant currents work mostly in favour of those sailing from the Red Sea8. The alleged Phoenician activities on the eastern shores of Africa should not blind us to the fact that this sea nation was equally interested in northwestern Africa. Archaeological evidence proves that Phoenicians were present on western shores of Spain and Morocco from c. 800 BC onwards; the sites of Lixus and Mogador in Morocco show traces of Phoenician settlement from the 7th c. BC9. The Mogador settlement in southern Morocco was abandoned just before 500 BC10; nevertheless, it would not stay so for long. The Phoenician influence beyond the Pillars of Heracles was soon to be replaced by the one of their descendants, Carthaginians, who won from their former masters the dominion of the western seas. Around the first half of the 5th c. BC, a Carthaginian resettling expedition led by a man named Hanno set out for the Atlantic coast of Morocco; the account of that journey comes from the extant Periplous of Hanno11. Its details still baffle the ones who study it; nevertheless, the consensus is that Hanno could have reached Gabon in his journey southwards and he would have gone further, had not he been stopped by adverse conditions12. This abortive circumnavigation proves that the very idea of sailing around Africa was already taking shape in the minds of Hannos contemporaries; for the Greeks, it would later take on a special meaning, as it also became a sign of Persian ineptitude. The said Persian who endeavoured to circumnavigate Africa and failed was called Sataspes; his story is recorded by Herodotus in the book 4, just after the Necho passage. Having raped an aristocrats daughter, he would have been killed if not for his mothers intercession; Xerxes gave him an alternative of
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Lendering Law 117-8 10 Law 118 11 Law 128, 134-9 12 Law 135-9

sailing around Africa, starting from the Pillars of Heracles13. Sataspes furnished a ship and crossed beyond the Straits of Gibraltar; the relatively uneventful journey along the Libyan coast came to an abrupt end when, according to Sataspes, his ship stopped and would not move forward. Having returned home, the youth told the king his story; disbelieving him, Xerxes ordered him to be crucified. Next example of an abortive circumnavigation, this expedition can be dated to 479-465 BC14. An image of a Persian failing to succeed when an Egyptian did must have been a powerful stimulus for the Greeks. Alexander would be certainly familiar with both versions and could utilise them for his own ends. In fact, it has to be stressed at this point that the issue of African circumnavigation has always raised ideological issues: it was never a nautical feat per se, but rather an occasion for boasting of superiority. Lloyd has elegantly demonstrated that in case of The Histories, the stories of Egyptian exploits and of Sataspes form an indirect contrast bond15. Necho is a wise ruler, a perfect king who undertakes and expedition to solve a geographical dilemma. In comparison, Sataspes is a criminal given a chance at atonement; he squanders it and is summarily killed. By cutting the Gordian knot, Alexander has proven he intended to fulfil the prophecies of greatness and challenge all those who could make any claim to his power. An expedition around Africa by Egyptians may have well incited him to repeat their effort in order to strengthen his credentials as the ruler of the empire. of Alexander could not only be a drive towards some specific goal, but also a conscious scheme to surpass achievements of all who ruled in the Mediterranean before his reign. Had Alexander lived longer, the great conquest of the west would have opened him the road to Africa he would have probably followed.
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Herodotus, The Histories 4.43 Roller 20 15 Lloyd 152-4

WORKS CITED Law, R. C. C. "North Africa in the period of Phoenician and Greek Colonization, c. 800 to 323 BC." The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 2, c. 500 B.C. A.D. 1050. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Print. Lendering, Jona. "Hanno." Livius.org, 14 Nov 2007. Web. 5 Jul 2010. <http://www.livius.org/ha-hd/hanno/hanno02.html>. Lloyd, Alan B. "Necho and the Red Sea: Some Considerations Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 63, 1977. Nawotka, Krzysztof. Alexander the Great. Cabridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. Print. Plutarch, First. Plutarch's Lives. Cambridge: Harvard University press, 1919. Print. Roller, Duane W. Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic. Oxon: Routledge, 2006. Print. Roos, A. G. Flavii Arriani Anabasis Alexandri. Arrian.. Leipzig: Teubner, 1997. Tarn, W. W. Alexander The Great: Volume 2, Sources And Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Pr, 2003. Godley. A.D. Herodotus, with an English translation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920.