ABSTRACT
In his narrative of the famous visit of Alexander to the oracle of Ammon at Siwah in Libya (3.3-4), Arrian indicates explicitly where his two principal sources, Ptolemy and Aristobulus, disagree. The divergences are two: Ptolemy’s substitution of snakes as guides for Alexander’s army in their march through the desert (FGrH 138 F 8) for the crows of Callisthenes (FGrH 124 F14a and 14b) and Aristobulus (FGrH 139 F 14), and his claim that Alexander marched back to Egypt via Memphis (FGrH 138 F 9), instead of returning along the Mediterranean coast following the same route by which he had come, as Aristoboulos states (FGrH 139 F 15). Ptolemy’s variant of snake guides is unique and was probably invented both to confirm the identity of Ammon with Alexander’s siring snake and also to legitimize his own dynastic claim to Egypt, as has been argued recently in recent scholarship. Ptolemy’s variant of the inland return journey is also unique, and Pownall argues that it too has roots in Ptolemaic propaganda, and is not simply a mistaken inference by Arrian from Ptolemy’s narrative, as has been suggested. After hijacking Alexander’s funeral cortège, Ptolemy buried Alexander’s body at Memphis, from where he later transferred it to Alexandria, when he began to develop that city into the capital of his new empire. By so directly associating Alexander’s visit to Siwah, where Zeus/Ammon proclaimed the divine filiation of the young conqueror, with Memphis, the ancient capital of the pharaohs, who were considered both kings and gods by their people, Ptolemy sought not only to legitimize Alexander’s divine status but also to pave the way for his own eventual ruler cult.
