Where did Alexander the Great fought during his campaign to the East? Even a schoolboy (of course, an excellent student) will answer: first he conquered the Persian Empire, at the same time liberating Egypt from the domination of the Persians, then went to Central Asia, made an unsuccessful campaign in India, and then returned to Babylon.
But is it that simple? Indeed, in those distant times, any unfamiliar country could be called India. Therefore, a number of oddities in the works of ancient authors allowed the Tomsk scientist Nikolai Novgorodtsev to suggest that the "Indies" that Alexander the Great went to were in fact … the European part of Russia and Siberia.
Macedonians against the Rus
The oddities begin with the transition of Alexander's army from the left to the right bank of the Jaxartes. For a long time, it is customary to identify Yaksart with the Syr Darya. However, many ancient authors wrote that, having overcome this river, the great conqueror with his army ended up in Europe. The border of Asia and Europe, as you know, runs along the Urals, which was formerly called Yaik. The tradition to draw the border between parts of the world along this river dates back to the days of Ancient Greece.
The name Yaksart, you see, is somewhat consonant with Yaik. Having crossed the river, Alexander entered the possession of the European Scythians, among whom, in addition to the Iranian-speaking population, there was a large proportion of the Slavs. Meanwhile, the medieval Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi calls the Russians the enemies of the Macedonians in this war. It is significant that he devotes twice as many pages to the war between Alexander and the Russians in Iskandernam than to the battles with the Persian king Darius.
Official map of the Eastern Macedonian campaign
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By that time, the Scythians managed to win memorable victories over the Median king Cyaxar, the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius, and in their campaign in the Middle East they reached Judea and Egypt. While Alexander was victoriously at war with Darius, his governor in Thrace, Zopirion, gathered a 30-thousandth army and went against the European Scythians. Near the city of Olbia, an ancient Greek colony on the northwestern coast of the Black Sea, his army was utterly defeated, and Zopirion himself was killed. So it is no coincidence that the Scythians were known as invincible.
Alexander did not allow himself to be defeated, but he did not manage to win a decisive victory over the Scythians. In the course of an ineffectual war, he razed half a dozen of their cities to the ground and even cut down trees. But there was still no end to the war.
Moreover, in one of the skirmishes, the commander was wounded by a stone in the head. In the end, having won another small victory, the Macedonian king seized the moment and generously granted the European Scythians a lot of freedoms, after which he left with his army to the eastern bank of the Ural-Yaksart.
Throughout Siberia
Further movements of the conqueror in the "Indies" are depressingly confused by interpreters. The renowned English geographer Professor J. O. Thomson, in his History of Ancient Geography, laments that Eratosthenes encountered great difficulties in compiling geographical maps based on Alexander's materials, and adds: "The detailed figures of Alexander's advancement in these places are hopelessly contradictory." And yet, as Nikolai Novgorodtsev notes, the path of the Macedonian army along the West Siberian Plain can be traced.
In Arrian's "Anabasis of Alexander" one can read: “This year Alexander opposed the parapamisads. Their country lies in the extreme north, all covered with snow and inaccessible to other peoples due to extreme cold weather. Most of it is a treeless plain covered with villages, roofs on houses are tiled, with a sharp ridge. There is a gap in the middle of the roofs through which smoke goes …
Due to heavy snowfalls, residents spend most of the year in the house, preparing food for themselves. They cover the vines and fruit trees with earth for the winter, which is harvested when the time comes for the plants to bloom … And yet the king, despite all these obstacles, overcame, thanks to the usual courage and perseverance of the Macedonians, the difficulties of transition. Many soldiers, however, and people accompanying the army, were exhausted and lagged behind …"
Winters in these parts are long, and Alexander in four months could well have walked all of Western Siberia from Tobol to Ob.
What rivers and cities did the Macedonians meet on this winter path? Rivers Indus, Akesin (Akezin), Gidasp, Hydraorta, Bias, Taxila city. Novgorodtsev believes that he was able to establish what is hidden under some of these names. For example, Akesin (Akezin) is undoubtedly the Ishim river. Once the Kyrgyz and Kazakhs called it Ak-Isel or Ak-Esel, which is consonant with Akesin. Hydraorta is flawlessly derived from the ancient Greek as "the main waterway", and such in Western Siberia is the Irtysh.
The Iranians, apparently, changed the "main waterway" into "water mistress", and got the Hydasp. Another river, confidently recognized on the ground as the Ob, is Bias. Many different tribes and peoples lived on its banks. Khanty and Mansi in the lower reaches called it As - "big, large river".
Samoyedians in the upper reaches called it Bi - "water". And now the river flowing from Lake Teletskoye is called Biya. Merging near Gornoaltaisk with Katun, Biya forms the Ob. Thus, it can be assumed that in his eastern campaign, Alexander the Great reached the Ob.
Having crossed the Ob (Indus) from the east to the west in the area of the modern Stone-on-Ob, Alexander went to the Irtysh (Gidasp) river in the area of present-day Pavlodar. Since there is no forest on the Irtysh in these places, he was forced to disassemble his fleet on the Ob (Indus) and transport it on carts to the Irtysh (Gidasp). Transporting the fleet by carts was only possible on flat terrain, but not in the Himalayas.
Between Indus and Hydaspus, Alexander visited the city of Taxila. This city was created by an ancient civilization that amazed the conquerors with its grandeur. Along the Gidasp (Irtysh) Alexander went down to the mouth of the Akesin (Ishim), where the Sibs (Siberians?) Lived, then to the confluence of the Gidasp into the Indus (Ob) and along the Indus (Ob) to the confluence of this river into the Arctic Ocean. There he discovered the Indo-Scythians and amber, saw the frozen ("curled") sea, got acquainted with the polar night and left the "golden woman", a bell and weapons.
One of the ancient authors describes how the soldiers complained that they were dragged into another world, to the shores of the ocean, full of monsters and shrouded in eternal darkness, with motionless waves in which all living things die in exhaustion.
This is an amazingly accurate and picturesque description of the Arctic Ocean, which testifies that Alexander's army rebelled on a dark polar night at the mouth of the Ob. Oriental authors also wrote about the conqueror's campaign in the land of darkness. According to their own information, somewhere in these critical latitudes, the Macedonians built a tower and a wall to protect the inhabited world from the Yajuj and Majuj (Gogs and Magogs).
By what route Alexander returned, it is not known. However, according to the official version, he turned back from the Bias River, then went down the Indus to its mouth and from there he led an army to Babylon through the desert. And if the Indus is identified with the Ob, such a focus, alas, becomes impossible, because the city of Babylon is not listed on any map in the world near the shores of the Arctic Ocean.
Trees and shadows
So what: Nikolai Novgorodtsev's assumptions are wrong? With their categorical denial, it may not be worth rushing. For in favor of his innocence Novgorodtsev gives a rather curious argument. We are talking about measurements of the length of the shadow from trees at noon and about calculations of the latitude of the area based on these measurements, which were carried out by scientists who accompanied Alexander's army.
Everywhere they measured the length of the shadow from trees of a known height. They did this at noon, when the trees cast the shortest shadow. In relation to the height of the tree to the length of the shadow, the tangent of the angle of the sun above the horizon at noon was determined, and the angle itself was determined from the tangent.
The height of the luminary above the horizon depends on the latitude of the area and the time of year. In Tomsk, in the homeland of Nikolai Novgorodtsev, during the winter solstice, December 21-22, the sun does not rise above 10 degrees above the horizon, and on the summer solstice at the end of June it reaches 56 degrees. In subtropical India, it does not drop below 34 degrees in winter.
The Greeks brought some measurements to us. Diodorus wrote that a tree 70 cubits high cast a shadow over three plephra. With an elbow length of 0.45 meters and a plephra of 30.65 meters, the angle itself is 19.5 degrees.
On the winter solstice, this corresponds to an area with a latitude of 47 degrees. If the measurement was taken at any other time of the year, it means that it was to the north. If, say, at the equinox, then at a latitude of 70 degrees, and on the day of the summer solstice, even above the pole, the luminary does not sink so low.
It turns out that the Macedonian army at that time was at least 15 degrees north of India, that is, 1600 kilometers. Strabo gave half of the other dimension. He did not indicate the height of the tree, but he said that the length of the shadow turned out to be as much as five stages (925 meters). If the measurement was made in India in winter, the height of such a tree would be over 600 meters. Such giants grew on our planet, perhaps during the time of the dinosaurs, but not in the era of Antiquity.
With a normal average tree height, this measurement was made, as an option, in the Subpolar region at a latitude of 64 degrees with a sun height above the horizon of 2 degrees, and if not on the day of the winter solstice, then to the north.
However, perhaps in this case we are dealing with the most banal exaggeration. After all, everyone knows that in India trees grow up to the sky, and they must have appropriate shadows. Moreover, in the original Strabo is talking about a tree, in the shade of which either 50 or 400 horsemen can take refuge.
Pavel BUKIN