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Some episodes in the Ethiopic version of the Alexander Romance are comparable to the Gilgameš Epic.
Alexander Romance (Ethiopic Version):
Alexander sets out to the Land of Darkness. When he arrives there a god of the country describes to him the land and the sea that is in it, and tells him that the throne of God is set in this land, and that it is supported by an angel having the faces of a bull, a lion, an eagle and a man; beneath it flows the river of the water of life. Beyond this land of darkness are seventy other lands, and beyond there are other seventy lands, and a mountain eighty thousand measures high which rests upon water. In this land there is no distinction between night and day, but Alexander prays to God who makes his paths straight.
He travels in the dark land for two years, and finally comes to a place beyond which the people tell him that there is nothing. He insists on advancing, and leaving ten thousand of his troops to live and to wait for him there for ten years, he sets out with some of the natives for guides; the king of the land also gives him a precious stone, which was one of those brought out of paradise by the father Adam, to show him the way. The stone pointed out the right road and led him to the fountain of life; Alexander had dried fish with him which he put into the water to see if it would live and swim, and as soon as the fish touched the water it came to life, and darted away and escaped. When Mātūn, that is el-Khiḍr (or Elijah) saw that the fish came to life he took off his clothes and bathed in the water of life, and dipped himself therein three times, saying, “In the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Ghost”. The sixty thousand kings that live in that land contend with el-Khiḍr, who asks their permission for Alexander’s army to go through the land because he is doing God’s will. Alexander passes through the land, and comes to a place where the water was so clear that he thought it was the water of life. He saw there emeralds and jacinths and other precious stones and a bird with a ring in its nose with which he talked. A place near here he finds much gold, and he makes for himself a crown of it, in which he sets the stone which came from paradise. From there he travels east and west and flies through the air, higher than the eagle, and sees all the stars of heaven: he writes a book about all these things. He next sets up a great furnace and casts a door and walls of iron to keep out Gog and Magog, the children of Adam, who are like wild beasts.
Source (list of abbreviations)
Alexander Romance (Ethiopic Version)
Bibliography
| Budge 1889, cv-cvi | Budge, E. A. Wallis. The History of Alexander the Great, being the Syriac Version. Edited from five manuscripts of the Pseudo-Callisthenes with an English Translation. London: Cambridge University Press 1889 (reprint: Amsterdan: APA-Philo Press 1976, esp. pp. cv-cvi, lxxxi-lxxxiii, 5-6, 11-12, 15). |
Amar Annus
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