"This is the story of a 20,000-mile journey in search of one of the greatest figures in history, a man whose legend has been told across the world for more than 2,000 years." "On the plains of Central Asia, the nomads still tell the tale of Alexander the Great." "But Alexander, they say, had horns." "He was the devil." "At the age of 25, Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, and in today's Persia, Iran, people still tell stories of the man who overthrew their civilisation." "But here in Iran, they call him Alexander the Accursed." "And Iranian mothers tell their children, "Go to bed or Alexander will get you."" "Before he was 30, Alexander's search for conquest and glory had brought him as far as India." "Here the legend is told that Indian holy men led him to the Speaking Tree, a sacred tree which could speak all the languages of the earth and foretell every man's destiny." "The tree spoke. lt rebuked him for thinking he could conquer India." "Alexander, it said, would die young, but his name would be remembered for ever." "Alexander the Great was born here in Macedonia in northern Greece in the shadow of Mount Olympus, the home of the gods." "And the gods are as important characters in his story as he is." "Zeus, Apollo, Hercules were real to him." "He even proclaimed that Zeus, the king of the gods, was his father." "This is not the tale of an ordinary person who thought in ordinary ways." "Like everyone who's been fascinated by his legend, I suppose I set out hoping to discover the truth about the man who conquered much of the world before he was 30." "After all, it's one of the most famous stories in all history." "To this day, no one has traced the whole of Alexander's great journey on the ground." "That was my plan." "The key problem, though, on this journey would be untangling the facts from the legend." "Alexander's tale has been told by the Greeks ever since, and the legends were right about one thing, that Alexander had extraordinary parents." "His father, Philip, was a unique character." "He created the Macedonian state in 20 years." "He was a small man. ln his later years he had one eye and a gammy leg." "He was an inveterate womaniser, had seven wives." "He was a habitual drunkard." "And yet he was a brilliant organizer and leader in war." "Alexander's mother, Olympias, was only about 12 when Philip fell in love with her." "She was beautiful and intelligent, but she was also manipulative, possessive, ruthless." "She was addicted to weird religious cults, gave herself with wild abandon to ecstatic dancing." "It was even said that she slept with snakes." "It's not surprising that the young Alexander grew up with an unshakeable sense of destiny." "There's a famous story about his childhood." "One day, a horse was brought to his father." "It was called Bucephalus;" "Ox head." "No one could tame it, but the ten-year-old boy bet his father he could, and quietly, calmly, he did." "His father laughed." ""Find yourself another kingdom, my boy."" ""Macedonia's not big enough for you."" "His father was right." "Macedonia was a small place." "So what was it that inspired Alexander to take on the might of Persia?" "Revenge. 150 years before, the Persians had marched across these plains to devastate Greece." "Alexander grew up dreaming of a war of revenge." "The scene was a hunting scene." "We have several..." "Alexander's image has been identified on the remains of a banqueting couch from his father's tomb." "Here, together, are father and son." " This is Alexander as a young man?" " Yes." "So this is before..." "This is Alexander about 19 or 20 years old." "He is the young prince." "He is the son of the king." "But he's not the world ruler which we know." "He's not Alexander the Great." "Here is still Alexander the son of Philip ll, here on this portrait." " And Alexander would have seen this." " Yes." "Because they have this bed on the palace, so he has seen this portrait." "And it is the only original portrait of his lifetime." "That is the important thing." "All the others are copies." " So this is the real Alexander." " The real, young Alexander." "It's a sensitive face, you might think." "Now look at this." "Here he is aged around 30, the world ruler." "And he looks to me like a troubled man, disillusioned, perhaps." "So what happened to him?" "When Alexander was 19, his father was murdered here in the theatre at Verghina." "Suddenly, unexpectedly, Alexander was king and head of an army which had already crushed southern Greece." "In spring 334 BC, he set out for Persia on his war of revenge." "And we set off in his footsteps from the little station below Verghina, our aim to follow him as closely as we could." "The journey would take us almost as far as China." "For much of it, we had no idea what to expect." "Nor, perhaps, did he, as he left Mount Olympus behind." "He would never see his homeland again." "In May of that year, Alexander's army was ferried across the Dardanelles from Europe to Asia." "In the transport ships, he had 35,000 troops." "Meanwhile, Alexander himself sailed on downstream on a pilgrimage to a place sacred in all Greek hearts, and especially his;" "Troy." "He was the first to go ashore." "Alexander waded ashore in full ceremonial armour." "Plumes on his helmet, shield." "On his chest the gorgon's head whose image was supposed to turn onlookers into stone." "And his first act was to throw his spear to the shore, claiming that Asia was his by right, won by the spear." "What a photo opportunity." "He walked up from the beach with his friend and lover, Hephaestion, to sacrifice at the graves of the Greek heroes killed in the Trojan War." "And the two young men ran naked round the tomb of his ancestor Achilles." "Below the hill of Troy, they saw where Achilles had dragged Hector's body behind his chariot." "Then they visited the old town of Troy." "Since he was a boy, Alexander had hero-worshipped the Greek warriors who'd fought and died on these walls a thousand years before." "Their deeds here had won them eternal glory, and Alexander thirsted for that above all things, says the historian Arrian." "On top of windy Troy, they went into the temple of the goddess Athena." "Inside the temple Alexander was shown weapons said to have been used by the heroes in the Trojan War." "He left his and took them with him, including a shield said to have been Achilles', which was taken with him all the way to India." "Coming here and honouring, sacrificing for the heroes, giving blood to their ghosts," "Alexander was trying to co-opt them, to have the heroes fighting for him in his war against Asia." "The Persian Empire was the largest which had yet existed on earth." "The Persians ruled from Ethiopia to the Black Sea, from the Aegean to India." "Their king, Darius, was Lord of the World." "This was what Alexander was taking on." "Alexander soon defeated the Persians' local governor and opened up the coast." "All the way down the western seaboard of Turkey, there were Greek cities under Persian rule, powerhouses of Greek civilisation." "Alexander's tutor, Aristotle, had taught here." "And in many of these cities, Alexander was seen as a liberator." "We picked up his path south of the Maeander river." "You head past the ruins of Miletus, which Alexander stormed." "No one goes up to the old road any more." "This path leads into the hills and meets up with the sacred way in about a quarter of a mile." "From then on, you just walk all the way to Didyma on the old road." "Alexander came along this path to the temple at Didyma." "Just as he had enlisted the help of the heroes of Troy, he now sought the support of one of the most powerful of the Olympian gods, Apollo, whose oracle had once drawn pilgrims here from all over the Greek world." "Belief in oracles like Didyma and their ability to tell the future was part of Alexander's religious faith." "It's easy to dismiss it today, as the villagers do, as ancient superstition." "But even modern presidents use soothsayers." "..all this information to oracle, and when the man comes, oracle says, "You're coming from Miletus and you got a problem in your stomach."" " And he goes, "That's absolutely amazing."" " Yes." "So you don't believe in fortune-telling, then?" "Alexander did." "This was a war of revenge." "In his mind, the war would be fought on the level of the gods, too, gods whose shrines had been desecrated by the Persians." "Back in the time of the great Persian war, the Persians had sacked Didyma." "Its sacred spring had dried up, its prophecies ceased." "But to Alexander, Apollo was still here." "He went down into the shrine and, as the historian Callisthenes told the tale, as if by magic, the spring came back to life." "However it happened, the oracle had found a voice after 150 years, and it said Alexander would triumph over the Persians." "As the Macedonian army marched on south, the problem now for Alexander was that the Persians controlled the sea." "Alexander now took a very daring and controversial decision which was contested by some of his high command." "He disbanded his fleet." "He had 160 ships, the Persians had about 400, so he couldn't engage them in open battle." "They cost him a fortune, provided by his Greek allies, so he decided to have done with them." "The war, he thought, could be won on land by denying the Persians their naval bases." "So he turned his attention to their main base on this coast:" "Bodrum, the ancient town of Halicarnassus." "The Persian stronghold was on the site of Bodrum Castle." "They were led by a mercenary, Memnon of Rhodes, one of many Greeks who hated Alexander." "He prepared for a long siege." "From where Alexander stood, the city rose from the sea in a great curve, like an amphitheatre." "It was surrounded by strong walls." "Alexander had all the latest technology - mobile towers, catapults, rams - but he couldn't break through." "Then one night a bizarre incident happened, which I tried to imagine in the crowded streets of today's holiday town." "Like all armies, the Macedonians used alcohol." "They drank before battle to give them courage, and drank after to celebrate." "They just drank." "Most of them were young men with all that energy to burn off." "On this night, one of the phalanx brigades, the infantry, camped outside the walls." "They were getting drunk and boasting about each other's deeds." "Then it came to a dare." "Two of them put on their weapons, marched out and decided to attack the walls of the citadel of Halicarnassus." "In the confusion, both sides threw in more troops and both took heavy losses." "Next day, humiliatingly, Alexander had to ask for the return of his dead." "But on the Persian side, the Greek mercenaries were now seriously worried." "Meanwhile, back in Memnon's war council, the mercenary commanders were getting nervous." "Things weren't going according to plan." "The Athenian mercenary general, Ephialtes, who was on Alexander's wanted list so probably hated him, didn't think they should even let him have his dead back." "You can picture the scene." ""Why should we give the little monster an inch, this tyrant of Greece?"" "Memnon, however, still wanted to play things coolly." ""Let him have his dead back."" "Ephialtes then spoke up again." "The situation, he said, was now serious." "Two stretches of curtain wall and two towers had been broken down by their battering rams on the eastern side." ""We've put a brick defence behind, but they'll break through that as well." ""We have to seize the initiative now." ""We can't just sit here and let them take us captive."" "They came up with a plan." "Ephialtes would lead a daring dawn raid, with 2,000 commandos, to burn Alexander's mobile towers and their battering rams." "The first group of 1,000 commandos rushed out of the walls bearing flaming torches, carrying buckets of pitch, anything that would burn." "Theirjob was to set fire to the siege engines." "The Macedonians counter-attacked." "Memnon then brought his reserve in." "For a moment, it looked as if the Macedonians might even lose this battle." "Just then, Macedonian reserves, who were the veterans, old men who'd fought under Alexander's father, brought themselves into the action." "Show the young men how to do it. lt was they who pushed the attackers back inside the city." "Memnon's last throw had been lost." "The Persians knew now that Alexander had won." "That night, Memnon evacuated his forces by sea to the island of Kos." "Alexander paused now and let the newly-weds in the army go home for the winter." "Nothing made him more popular than that, says Arrian." "But as he rested with his veterans, here, in the ancient city of Milas, he must have reflected he'd still not touched the heart of the Persian Empire." "That winter, Alexander campaigned through the mountains of south-west Turkey." "And one story from that time became famous." "The main army had cut inland from the coast." "Alexander took a short cut with a smaller force along the seashore." "He came along the beach here until he reached this row of rocky headlands." "The sea was running high, but he wouldn't turn back." "It was nearly a disaster." "He ordered his men to march on through the water." "There were probably a few thousand of them with backpacks." "Like most of them, Alexander was a lot shorter than me, and he couldn't swim." "The Greek geographer Strabo said that the Macedonian army spent most of the day walking through the water chest-deep." "This must be the place." "Finally, the wind changed and the shivering troops were able to get out of the water." "The expedition historian, Callisthenes, claimed the sea had bowed to Alexander." "I learned three things about Alexander that day." "That he didn't always think things out ahead, that he was an obstinate man, and also, and most important of all, he was lucky." "That beach walk was the first hint that going precisely in his footsteps might reveal more than just where he'd been." "But it's hard to pin down people in history, because, like us, they're always on the move, as we constantly reinvent them to suit our own times." "We followed him north into the plains of Central Turkey and entered an older world more akin to the one he knew." "At a village where we stopped, the people pointed out an old caravan route." "Here, their forefathers said, the great lskander, Alexander, had come." "This is the old Baghdad road?" "Fantastic!" "So the road is called the Road of Iskander, then?" "This is Alexander's Road?" "Right in the middle of Turkey stands the ancient town of Gordion." "Alexander came here to meet reinforcements from Greece, but he was also drawn by a strange legend." "The Americans have been excavating here for nearly 50 years, in the place for ever associated with the tale of the Gordian knot." "In the dig hut, we celebrated Alexander's birthday, the 20th of July." "As guest of honour, I was awarded the Gordian hat, decorated with knot and sword." "The legend said there was an old cart in the temple whose shaft was tied with a most intricate knot." "Whoever undid it, so the story went, would become Lord of Asia." "Arrian says that when they got here, Alexander conceived of a "pothos", a desire to go up to the Acropolis to see this extraordinary cart." "When he got up there, presumably he goes through the gates, and then there's a temple that the Greeks say was to Zeus, and nearby this ancient cart had been preserved." "is there anything archaeologically that suggests..." " Nothing like that." " Just a little bit?" "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." "We would like it." "With hindsight, quite a significant moment in his career, coming here." "That's what's interesting." "The story that he came to this place, which was not such a big place any more." "It wasn't a capital any more." "But he still came here to make a symbolic gesture." "It was just a cheap farm cart, the Greeks said, like the ones you still see in Turkey today." "Alexander took a long, hard look at this impossible knot." "He couldn't for the life of him see how he could undo it." "It was probably rather like the kind of knots we call Turk's-head knots, a big knot with all the ends tucked up inside so you just can't see where to begin." "By now there was quite a crowd, local people always interested to see someone make a fool of himself trying to solve the riddle." "And the Macedonian officers, who were worried now." "They wished Alexander had not attempted this." "What happens if he fails?" "This would be a really bad omen." "What happened next we don't know for sure." "Some say that Alexander pulled out the pin that held the shaft and the yoke together, loosened the knot so he could pull the yoke out." "According to others, though, Alexander pulled out his sword, said, "lt doesn't matter how the knot is undone,"" "and he slashed the knot open to reveal the hidden ends inside." "A very Alexander way of doing things." "That night, thunder and lightning crashed over Gordion." "The gods were with him." "In that moment is the beginning of the myth of Alexander the Great." "But, for us, how to sort out fact from fiction?" "The problem grows more acute from this point in the story." "Look at the two historians who are our guides on this journey." "The first I've already mentioned;" "Arrian." "He was a Greek." "He wrote about 400 years after Alexander." "He was a former military man, provincial governor, well-known author, a decent chap." "You could imagine him being a special columnist for the "Daily Telegraph" or the "Washington Post" today." "Basically, he thinks Alexander is a noble spirit and unsurpassed as a leader in human history." "There's another tradition, though." "And that is represented by Curtius." "Curtius was a Roman." "He wrote about 300 years after Alexander." "And he had a great eye for a story." "He was interested in the scandals, the murders, the war crimes, the purges and plots." "Curtius knew that men are motivated by lust for power and sex." "He knew that cruelty was inherent in human nature." "And he also knew that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely." "And there you have it; the sources disagree, and they give us two radically different Alexanders." "Both, perhaps, could be true." "The prince among men and the tyrant." "Across Asia, that's still the folk-story version of Alexander, like Jekyll and Hyde." "Here they still call him the "two-horned one"" "because legend says he really had two horns." "When his barbers found out, he killed them." "The last barber kept the secret until he could bear it no longer." "He shouted it down a well." ""Alexander's got horns He's the devil"" "But at the bottom of the well were reeds used in flutes, and they sent the secret round the whole world." "Fantastic!" "Now the king of kings, Darius himself, enters the story." "Descended from the line of Persian rulers going back to Cyrus the Great, a Persian hero." "As the Macedonians marched from Ankara to the Mediterranean," "Darius left Babylon with an army twice the size of Alexander's." "He circled round Alexander's back and cut off his line of retreat." "He would crush the upstart once and for all." "The kings met at the little town of Issus." "lssus today doesn't look much like a place of destiny." "But one of the decisive battles of history took place here." "Darius lined up along the banks of the river Payaz between the mountains and the sea." "In his centre, along a line of crags, he had 20,000 Greek mercenaries." "These were to repel Alexander's phalanx troops." "By the sea, he'd massed cavalry forces to overwhelm Alexander's left wing." "But on his left, by the mountains, Darius had placed untrained infantry, protected by archers, a sure sign he feared they couldn't cope on their own." "He saw the Persian plan." "It was not flawed so much as obvious." "He knew this was the weak point because of the terrain and the archers." "As soon as he had seen those archers, he knew this was where to attack." "The autumn light was failing fast." "The wise heads said," ""Wait till tomorrow."" "But Alexander would not." "You can imagine standing here as Alexander rides along his lines and, we're told in the sources, encourages the troops." "He appeals to the Macedonians and the cry goes up." "He's singling out men for their bravery." "The regiments are shouting." "He goes along the Greek allied contingents, and says" ""We're defeating the great king of Persia." ""We're going to avenge Persian humiliations of Greece."" "He goes to his Thracian and Balkan allies and says," ""Enemy, kill, booty." They understand that." "These guys are in here for the more fun aspects after the battle." "And all of the army is really worked up to a fever pitch." "The Persians are so nervous." "They're waiting for the charge." "Then Alexander gives, "Charge!" Down they come." "These troops, "Oh, my God." "They're after me personally."" "They let loose a volley which we're told is so bad that the arrows hit each other. lt's ineffective." "They turn around, run into the infantry." "They try to muscle themselves." "This throws the infantry into a panic." "Alexander's cavalry is coming into the river, is on top of them." "The entire Persian left flank dissolves in a panic." " The battle's lost in the first few minutes." " ln the first minute." "Alexander had smashed right through to Darius's chariot." "Darius had to flee for his life." "This is the moment, preserved on a great mosaic from Pompeii." "Alexander storms into the history books like a hurricane, wild-haired and wide-eyed." "Darius, the noble king of the world, stares in disbelief, shaken by pity and fear." "The world had changed." "Team Charlie, radio check." "Over." "We followed him on south down the Lebanese coast, with the help of the UN." "Most cities here surrendered without a fight, but Tyre refused him." "The city stood on an island half a mile offshore." "Infuriated by its resistance," "Alexander decided to build a causeway out to it across the waves." "What you can see now, the peninsula covered with all the high-rise buildings, has actually been caused by the silting up of the siege causeway which Alexander built and which literally joined the island to the land for ever." "It took Alexander seven months to build the causeway, 800 yards long and 70 wide." "It was a new and sobering insight into his character." "Nothing would be allowed to stand in his way." "No one would be given mercy if they defied him." "23,000 people were trapped down there, more than half of them women and children." "After the walls were breached, the people crowded into the temple of Hercules, where the Christian church stands today." "There they prayed for deliverance." "13,000 women and children were captured and sold into slavery." "They had resisted." "Those were the rules of war." "As for the men, Arrian says the leaders were spared." "But according to Curtius, all 2,000 survivors were crucified along this shore." "Who's right?" "It depends on which Alexander you believe in." "I had to produce my copy of Arrian to persuade the Israeli border authorities we were coming through to cover a 2,000-year-old war." "I know this is an unbelievable story." "They don't believe there's no politics." "There's always politics in Israel." "So we entered Palestine." " Take care." " Bye-bye." "We drove south along the ancient highway used by armies throughout history, heading for Gaza." "Gaza, too, was destroyed by Alexander because its people resisted." "They've been resisting ever since." "Gaza has had a lot of great conquerors coming through in its time, hasn't it?" "All of them, since the beginning of history." "Many of them... I met some leading Palestinian historians and we reflected on their long and violent history." "Greeks, Romans, the Byzantine emperors, then the caliphs." "This is the land of battles, as we say, between the most great emperors in the world, from 3,000 BC until now." "Then one of the guests pulled out his copy of the Muslim holy book, the Koran." " This is the two horns?" " The two horns." "And there again was two-horned Alexander, Zul-qarnain, in one of the Archangel Gabriel's revelations to the prophet Muhammad." ""They ask thee concerning Zul-qarnain, say I'll tell you something of his story." ""We established his power on earth and we gave him the ways and the means to all ends."" "So Allah, God, made him the most powerful ruler on earth - with power." "And so, in December 332 BC, Alexander entered Egypt." "The most ancient and glamorous civilisation fell without a fight." "The Persians were hated because they didn't respect the Egyptian gods, and Alexander was welcomed as a liberator." "For 3,000 years, Egypt had been an inward-looking civilisation." "Now Alexander opened it up to a wider world." "On the west of the Nile delta, he himself marked out the site for a great new harbour." "It was called, after him, Alexandria." "Ever since, it's been Egypt's greatest port, and to Greeks everywhere, the capital of memory." "Alexandria was the greatest emporium, the marketplace...of the world." "The wealth that accumulated was made very good use of." "First, building a magnificent city, with wonderful street structure..." "..drainage system, water supply." "Great temples, palaces." "Palaces upon palaces, as Homer said." "And, above all, a centre of world culture to compete with Athens itself." "With enormous amount of wealth and money, they invited the best minds in the world to come and settle in Alexandria." "In the third century BC, within one century after its foundation," "Alexandria could claim the great names of Euclid, the great mathematician," "Eratosthenes, the great astronomer," "Herophilus, the founder of anatomy, Archimedes..." "And the greatest library in the world." "The greatest library." "A universal library, in the proper sense, for the first time." "A prototype of the British Museum or the Bibliothoque Nationale." "This was in the mind of Alexander the Great, and this is his great, perhaps, contribution to world history." "The city is still a cosmopolitan place today." "It's one of Alexander's great legacies." "the first of nearly 30 Alexandrias he founded between Africa and India." "And only now are archaeologists finding material evidence of the vision behind it." "It shows a side of the king's character we hadn't seen so far, not just the warrior, but a far-sighted thinker," "faithful to his tutor Aristotle's vision of Greek civilisation and its power to change the world." "That's great!" "Thanks!" "Under the streets of Alexandria, archaeologists have discovered canals designed to bring the city's water supply in from the Nile." "Was all this Alexander's vision too, I wondered." "Deeper still under the city you can find another legacy in the catacombs, in their exuberant mingling of Egyptian and Greek and Eastern cultures." "Could Alexander have foreseen all this in his wildest dreams?" "A day or two later we woke to a cool dawn in the Western Desert, back on his track and our first major expedition." "In the winter of 332 BC Alexander surprised everyone." "Instead of turning towards Persia, he left his army by the Nile and headed off with his close companions towards Libya." "His goal was the distant oasis of Siwa and the famous oracle of Ammon." "He was still seeking signs from the gods." "From the Nile valley, it's 700km to Siwa, and the last stage goes straight into the desert, for Alexander eight or nine days'journey." "He came through the little oasis of Gara, and we camped close by." "This is the way to make good salad." "This is Alexander Christus." "This is "salade au Alexandre"." " Blood in everything." " Sweet blood." "Now, you see, I think it must have been a bit like this for Alexander and the boys." "These are young, young bloods." "They're only men in their early 20s." "They've been on a campaign for two or three years and now they've got a few weeks off in Egypt and they're camping out, lighting fires underneath the stars," "drinking a bit of date wine, having a bit of fun." "I think the journey to Siwa must have been an exciting experience for them." "This part of the journey, the Greeks talk about a landscape without any features." ""Not a single tree or mountain by which we could get our bearings, just a great ocean of sand."" "It was, says the historian Curtius, as if they'd entered a vast sea, and their eyes looked around in vain for a sight of land." "Two curious things happened on the way which the chronicler," "Callisthenes, made out to be omens." "They ran out of water and were saved by a sudden shower." "They lost their way, but birds appeared and led them back to the track." "Finally, they entered Siwa." "Even today, it's another world from the Egypt of the Nile valley, a strange and magical place." "Siwa stands in the middle of the desert, but it's wonderfully fertile, miraculously so." "Not surprising, then, that for so long people came here expecting miracles." "For here on the sacred hill, the god Ammon, Zeus to the Greeks, was believed to speak directly to mankind." "Alexander and his friends approached on the sacred way." "They refreshed themselves in a pool known as the Spring of the Sun. lt's still here." "He set foot on the sacred path with Hephaestion and his closest companions, their clothes still dust-streaked from the desert." "And what did he want to hear from the oracle?" "Arrian says his burning desire was not to ask about his future fate but to find out who his father really was." "The oracle's shrine stands on top of the hill." "It's perhaps the only place on earth where you can trace his footsteps right up to the door." "He stood on this spot and looked in at the gilded barge and the strange gold statue of the god Ammon, whose eyes met his." "Alexander stepped forward and asked his questions." "The answer was delivered by the priests, written on papyrus, literally a letter from heaven." "As they gave it to him, they greeted him in Greek as the Son of God." "That was all he needed to hear." "I imagine Alexander and Hephaestion and their friends celebrated that night." "Like all Macedonians, they loved a good party." "But was it all just a piece of cynical manipulation to legitimise him in Egyptian eyes?" "To this day, no one knows." "He may not have believed he was literally the Son of God, but this was a man obsessed with his own myth, creating it as he went along." "And what happened here surely must have appealed to his sense of destiny." "Alexander now hurried back to rejoin the army." "The Siwa episode tells us that Alexander always journeyed with one eye on the here and now and the other on eternity." "He was an opportunist and a visionary rolled into one, which made him very unpredictable and dangerous." "I think he took the direct route east to the Nile, an epic journey in its own right." "In one lonely oasis on this route we found the first evidence of Alexander as God King." "As far as you can see, because it's mostly damaged - you'll see the inscription here is badly eroded - you can still see a certain cartouche here." "The cartouche is that oval shape that contains the name of an Egyptian king." "And, of course, Alexander, he is being considered an Egyptian king." "It would have what we call "sare"." "That's the goose that represents the sign..." "That's its neck and its head." "The sign of the sun would have been on top of it." "So he would be the son of the god Ra, then another cartouche that will have his name." "You can just manage to see some traces saying "Alexandros"." "How far did all this go to his head?" "I suspect it's not a question we can answer in 20th-century terms." "But now there need be no limit on his ambitions." "Alexander the Great was one of these characters that sometimes he does things that look out of the normal for normal persons like you and me." "But Alexander was not a normal person." "He is one of these people who lived very short but he left his stamp, not only on the history of ancient times but on the history of mankind." "Soon, on the walls of the greatest Egyptian temples, he would be shown like the pharaohs of the past, the successor of Khufu, Seti and Ramses the Great." "And in Luxor, in the holy of holies, the 24-year-old Macedonian appears honouring his father Ammon and pouring libations over the phallus of the god Min." "Son of Ammon, Beloved of Ra, King of the Two Lands;" "Alexander." "He'd come along way from his rugged northern land." "But he'd only just begun." "Ahead lay Persia."