Alexander the Great: the Making of a Myth
"You want a piece of me": myths, legends, and videogames
You want a piece of me,” sang Britney Spears, in her defiant song Piece of Me. Britney was stalked and harassed by paparazzi, and the tabloids obsessed over her weight, her sex life, her personal life. Everyone wanted a piece of her.
Long before Britney was recording pop bangers: everyone wanted a piece of Alexander the Great.
The young king built an empire which stretched from Greece to India, and was undefeated in battle. Stories about his divine origins and heroic deeds have been told and retold in different cultures and languages for centuries.
A recent exhibition at the British Library explored the lies, half-lies, and fictions told about Alexander the Great. It covered a dizzying array of mediums and time periods. A review in the Guardian called it “infuriating” and “postmodern”, for the sin of focusing on the stories told about Alexander, from religious texts to comic books, and paying little attention to the historical fact of his life.
Alexander's arm dangles out of his coffin in this illustration from Manuchihr Khan Hakim’s Iskandarnamah (Story of Iskandar).
Printed book published 1857–58. British Library
Visitors marvelled at illustrations of Alexander descending to the ocean floor in a bell, or flying through the sky pulled by griffins, and meeting the Queen of the Amazons. We admired a magnificent suit of armour, antique coins, graphic novels, comic books, illuminated manuscripts, a scene from the Assassian’s Creed videogame: all adorned with Alexander’s image.
The underlying message was this: throughout history, people have wanted to believe Alexander was one of them. The Persians believed his real father was a Persian king. The French painted him dressed as a medieval Frenchman. A Jewish source wrote that Alexander was secretly circumcised. Early Muslim sources identified Alexander with a figure in the Qur’an.
A copy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet was displayed, opened to the page where Hamlet remarks that even Alexander, in death, is like any other man.
Christians saw a Christian, Jews saw a Jew, Hamlet saw a dead man. Modern retellings of Alexander’s myth have emphasised his religious tolerance, and his romantic connections with men. We all see what we want to see.
Alexander meets with the Queen of the Amazons, in Histoire ancienne jusqu’ a Cesar (Ancient History to the Time of Caesar)
Illuminated manuscript, 13th century. British Library
Alexander the Great: the Making of a Myth showed at the British Library until 19 February 2023. You can still buy the exhibition catalogue at the British Library shop.