One of the things that bothers me the most about the internet are all the pernicious articles claiming that such-and-such well-attested historical figure from ancient times actually never existed at all. One of the most annoying claims out there on the internet is that there is no evidence for the existence of Alexander the Great. This claim is blatantly ridiculous, but yet I have seen multiple people on the internet claiming it, repeatedly and in earnest. In this article, I intend to offer a sound debunking of this assertion by presenting some solid evidence for the existence of Alexander the Great.
Introduction
There is, in fact, a ton of overwhelming evidence for the existence of King Alexandros III of Makedonia, the man whom we know in English as “Alexander the Great,” from both literary sources and from archaeology. In fact, Alexander the Great is, by far, one of the best-attested individuals from the entire ancient world. Unfortunately, though, I have seen a number of people on the internet claiming there is no such evidence and even claiming that Alexander the Great probably never even existed.
This variety of denialism of the existence of well-attested historical figures from the ancient world seems to be very popular among people on the internet claiming to be “amateur historians,” despite having no background or formal training in ancient history whatsoever. There are other people going around on the internet claiming that people like Socrates, Pythagoras, Jesus, and even Plato, all of whom definitely really existed, did not exist.
This only serves as a testament to the sheer inadequacy of our education system at teaching people about ancient history. Among professional academic historians there is no doubt whatsoever that Alexander the Great really existed and that he really conquered the Achaemenid Empire. There is so much clear and irrefutable evidence for Alexander the Great’s historical existence that it is simply not an open question. Here is just a small sample of a few of the more obvious pieces of the evidence for his existence:
Written evidence
Before I go on to discuss the archaeological evidence for Alexander the Great’s existence, I wish to emphasize that, even if we had no archaeological evidence whatsoever, based on the surviving literary evidence alone, we would already have overwhelming evidence for Alexander the Great’s existence.
Alexander’s life is described in great detail in numerous surviving accounts written by various ancient Greek and Roman historians. There are five major detailed histories of the campaigns of Alexander the Great written by reputable historians that have survived to the present day:
- the Universal History written by the Greek historian Diodoros Sikeliotes (lived c. 90 – c. 30 BC)
- The Histories of Alexander the Great, written by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus (fl. c. first century AD)
- the Anabasis of Alexander, written by the Greek historian Arrianos of Nikomedia (lived c. 86 – after c. 146 AD)
- The Life of Alexander the Great, written by the Greek biographer and Middle Platonist philosopher Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – c. 120 AD)
- the Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, written by the Roman historian Iustinus (fl. c. second century AD), based on an earlier history written by the Roman historian Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus (fl. c. first century BC)
Of these accounts, Arrianos and Diodoros’s are generally considered to be the most historically reliable. In addition to all these writers who wrote detailed histories of Alexander’s campaigns, Alexander is also mentioned by countless other ancient writers. Indeed, he is at least mentioned by just about every major Greek or Roman historian who lived after him whose writings have survived to the present day.
We even have written sources about Alexander written by authors who are neither Greek nor Roman. For instance, we have an extremely negative account of Alexander’s conquest of the Achaemenid Empire from the medieval Persian Book of Ardā Wīrāz. It is hardly contemporary, but it is still neither Greek nor Roman.
While it is indeed true that many of our written sources concerning Alexander the Great are indeed late, these sources rely on earlier sources that have since been lost. For instance, one of the most important sources known to have been used by the historians of Alexander whom I have listed above was a detailed account of Alexander’s life written by the Greek historian Kallisthenes of Olynthos (lived c. 360 – 327 BC), who accompanied Alexander on all his travels and knew him personally.
Other accounts of Alexander’s campaigns that were used by these historians include accounts written by Alexander’s own generals Ptolemaios I Soter and Nearchos, by Aristoboulos of Kassandreia (a junior officer in Alexander’s army), and by Onesikritos (Alexander’s helmsman). All of these people were actually with Alexander on his campaigns.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an edition of Arrianos’s Anabasis of Alexander from 1575. Arrianos’s account of the campaigns of Alexander the Great is generally considered the most reliable.
Contemporary Babylonian chronicles
If, for whatever bizarre reason, you are only willing to believe someone existed if we have direct archaeological evidence of them, then you are also in luck here. You see, we have all kinds of overwhelming archaeological evidence of Alexander the Great’s existence because he was the king of a large swathe of the literate world at the time when he was alive. Perhaps the most impressive evidence of him comes in the form of contemporary Babylonian accounts of him inscribed in clay tablets.
For instance, the Alexander Chronicle, is a Babylonian account inscribed on clay tablets and dated to 330 BC recording Alexander the Great’s victory over Darius III in the Battle of Gaugamela in late September or early October 331 BC and his pursuit of the Persian traitor Bessos, who had murdered Darius III in July 330 BC. Here is a photograph of the tablet itself:
There is also another surviving Babylonian cuneiform tablet contemporary to Alexander that talks about him. Known as the Chronicle Concerning Alexander and Arabia, it describes some of the events of the last few years of Alexander’s reign. Here is a photograph of it:
So, if Alexander never existed, why is there a Babylonian account of his victory at Gaugamela from one year after it happened? Likewise, if Alexander the Great never ruled, why is there a contemporary Babylonian account describing the last few years of his reign?
Greek and Egyptian inscriptions
There are also numerous inscriptions written in Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and other languages mentioning Alexander that are contemporary to Alexander’s own lifetime. For instance, here is an inscription dating to c. 330 BC from the city of Priene commemorating Alexander the Great’s dedication of the Temple of Athena Polias there. The inscription clearly reads in Ancient Greek: “King Alexander dedicated [this temple] to Athena Polias.”
This inscription is currently on display in the British Museum. You can visit it there any time you like. If Alexander the Great never existed, then how did he dedicate a temple to Athena Polias at Priene in c. 330 BC?
We also have mentions of Alexander in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions. Here is an Egyptian inscription dating to c. 332 BC with Alexander the Great’s name written in Egyptian hieroglyphics:
Here is an Egyptian carving depicting Alexander addressing the god Min from the Luxor Temple in Luxor, Egypt. His name is inscribed over his head in Egyptian hieroglyphics, clearly indicating that this is supposed to be him:
Contemporary and posthumous coins with his name and face on them
Then you have to take into account the hundreds upon hundreds of surviving coins with Alexander the Great’s name and face on them, some of them contemporary. Here is a silver coin with Alexander’s face on the obverse and his name clearly written on the reverse, minted c. 333 – c. 327 BC in Kilikia while Alexander was still alive:
So, if Alexander the Great did not exist, why were people minting coins with his name and face on them during his lifetime?
There are countless of these coins. In fact, there are so many of these coins you can literally buy them online. Some of the lesser-value coins in poorer condition are fairly cheap.
Alexander’s successors kept minting coins with Alexander’s name and face on them even after Alexander was dead. Here is a another silver coin with Alexander the Great’s name and face on it, minted by the Kingdom of Makedonia between c. 322 and c. 320 during the reign of Alexander’s successor Antipatros, within just a few years after Alexander’s death:
Alexander sarcophagus
Another piece of archaeological evidence of Alexander the Great’s exploits is the famed Alexander Sarcophagus, a remarkably well-preserved Hellenistic marble sarcophagus from Sidon dating to the fourth century BC, within a few decades of Alexander the Great’s lifetime. The carvings on the sarcophagus depict Alexander the Great’s conquests. Here is a photograph of it:
It is currently held in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum in Istanbul. You can visit it there anytime you like.
Land bridge of Tyre
If all this evidence has failed to persuade you that Alexander the Great really existed, there is also this:
Do you know what this is?
This is the site of the ancient city of Tyre. As you can see, now it is on a peninsula attached to the mainland, but it was not originally. Originally, Tyre was on an island off the coast, but Alexander the Great, during his siege of Tyre in 332 BC, built a land bridge from the coast to the island.
Eventually, over time, that land bridge became larger and Tyre became permanently linked to the coast of Asia.
The entire Hellenistic Era
Finally, we have what is perhaps our greatest piece of evidence in favor of the existence of Alexander the Great: the Hellenistic Era (c. 323 – c. 31 BC). This was an entire period of history lasting several hundred years when Greek culture was spread throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Greek kingdoms ruled by Greek monarchs arose, of which we have ample evidence, both historical and archaeological.
According to ancient sources and mainstream history, this whole era arose as the result of the conquests of Alexander the Great. If Alexander the Great did not exist, then you would have to make up a whole new explanation for this entire era of history, ignoring the much simpler and more parsimonious explanation that Alexander the Great actually existed.
You would have to find some kind of new explanation for why we have, for instance, Greco-Buddhist art:
ABOVE: One of the earliest known representations of the Buddha, a statue from Gandhara, Pakistan dating to the first or second century AD, displaying clear influence from Greek-style statues
ABOVE: Representation of the Greek Titan Atlas supporting the sky on a Buddhist monument from Hadda, Afghanistan (As I discuss in this article I originally published in February 2017, in Greek mythology, Atlas does not hold up the Earth, but rather the sky.)
Clearly, the simplest, most logical explanation here is that Alexander the Great was a real person.
Conclusion
I should make it clear that the evidence I have presented here is by no means the only evidence there is for Alexander the Great’s historicity. These pieces of evidence that I have presented are just a few examples I happened to think of off the top of my head. There are tons and tons of other pieces of evidence.
I will not go to the trouble of presenting more evidence here, however, since I think that anyone who refuses to believe in the existence of Alexander the Great even after all the evidence I have shown will probably not find any amount of evidence convincing.
Fine survey
Thank you so much! I am glad you appreciate my work. Thank you for leaving a comment!
Well I guess Wikipedia is in denial of the Fake Alexander the Great as well. Thats the way the ball bounces some times.
“The Histories of Alexander the Great (Latin: Historiae Alexandri Magni) is the only ancient Latin biography of Alexander the Great. It was written by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus[1] in the 1st-century AD, but the earliest surviving manuscript comes from the 9th century.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histories_of_Alexander_the_Great#:~:text=The%20Histories%20of%20Alexander%20the,comes%20from%20the%209th%20century.
Nothing about the passage you have quoted here in any way supports the conclusion that Alexander the Great did not exist. The work by Quintus Curtius Rufus that it references is indeed the only surviving historical biography of Alexander the Great written in the Latin language in ancient times. There are, however, multiple surviving ancient biographies of Alexander written in Greek (namely those of Arrianos and Ploutarchos) and there are many other writings that talk about him, even though they are not strictly biographies of him.
Finally, it’s not at all surprising that the earliest surviving manuscripts of Quintus Curtius Rufus’s biography are from the ninth century CE, because we almost never have original manuscripts when it comes to ancient history. The vast majority of ancient texts have survived only through medieval copies of much earlier manuscripts that have been lost.
SO After reading your pleasing article, I would like to ask you a few queries as you have mentioned that nothing here proves that alexander the great does not exist even though we don’t have any architectural pieces of evidence or excavation sites. The writers whom we considered as a piece of evidence lived almost 200 years later the period of Alexander the great and they have their sources piled up from the companions of the king. So why do we consider MAHABHARATA and RAMAYANA as mythologies, even though we have writings and architectural proofs of them? just because it states some highly advanced actions?
No evidence for Alexandria. Just evidence that Greeks conquered Persia.
Um… there are in fact mountains of evidence for the existence of both the city of Alexandria and Alexander the Great personally. The city of Alexandria is mentioned in literally hundreds of thousands of historical sources at least, archaeologists have excavated hundreds of thousands of ancient artifacts and ruins from the city, and the city still exists today as the third-largest city in Egypt. If you don’t believe that Alexandria exists, you can literally go visit the city today and see it for yourself.
My error. I intended to write Alexander. How it came out as Alexandria baffles me. I was tired at the time of writing is my only excuse. Alexandria still exists btw (lol) so I know of its existence. I wonder, though, who actually built it.
Jesus did not exist. There are no contemporary witness accounts, no archeological evidence. Look really into it and you will find no convincing evidence for his existence. Keep in mind that many of the so called sources cannot be trusted since they were trying to spread christianity.
I actually wrote an article about the historicity of Jesus a couple years ago. I have learned a lot more since then and I think that I could greatly improve the article if I were to revise it today. Nonetheless, overall, most of its main points still hold strong.
I also think you are being too dismissive of Christian sources. Yes, they have an agenda. Yes, they are unreliable. Yes, they are filled with claims that can’t possibly be historically true. In spite of all this, however, they are not totally useless as sources of historical information. Even wildly unreliable sources can still contain accurate information. The supreme difficulty lies in the act of teasing the accurate information out from all the legends.
We can’t say for certain but he may or may not have existed I don’t know to be certain I would need a largely unbiased towards any lying about his existence around the time with similar charitaristics it could contradict the Bible I D K
What a blatant claim that Jesus did not exist. Even Tacitus (a Roman emperor and historian) wrote about Jesus and his’ crucifixion.
You are correct that there almost certainly was a historical Jesus, but the historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus who wrote about Jesus was actually a Roman senator, not a Roman emperor. There was a Roman emperor named Marcus Claudius Tacitus, but he was a completely different person and he lived over a hundred years after the historian Tacitus.
There is a wealth of evidence that Christ existed. The Gospels were all written within 90 years of his death and resurrection. Indeed, Gary Habermas says there is evidence they were written within 30 years of the Ascension.
Contemporary accounts by historians, Jewish and Roman, such as Tacitus mention Jesus. Jewish and Roman authorities hunted down Christians post 33 AD.
Several modern scholars have tried and failed to dismiss the case for Jesus.
You’re right that it is extremely likely that there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth, but you’re wrong about some of the facts here. Tacitus was hardly a “contemporary” of Jesus; he was born sometime around 56 CE, which is over twenty years after Jesus’s death, and he wrote his Annals, in which he mentions Jesus, sometime around 116 CE, which is about fifteen years shy of a century after Jesus’s death. None of this is surprising, since there isn’t any particular reason why Roman historians earlier than Tacitus would have been interested in writing about Jesus, but calling Tacitus a “contemporary” is still a bit of a stretch.
I am aware that Tacitus was born in 56AD. I am also aware that he was therefore able to hear accounts from people who were living at the time of Christ’s crucifixion.
Lost sources do count as sources if we have surviving sources that rely on them. A great deal of what we know about the ancient world in general comes from sources that have been lost, since the information from those lost sources has been preserved through later sources that rely on them. For instance, much of what we know about the history of classical Greece comes from the writings of the Greek historian Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – c. 120 AD). Even though he was writing long after the fact, Ploutarchos had access to a wide range of early sources that we no longer have access to because they haven’t survived.
It is worth reminding you that we have very few original autograph manuscripts from the ancient world; the manuscripts we have are all copies of earlier manuscripts that have since been lost. If we were only allowed to use sources that we actually have the original manuscripts for, that would basically mean we couldn’t rely on any kind of written evidence whatsoever. Imposing such a standard would be ridiculous. No serious historian would ever suggest such a thing.
A source claimed to be derived from a lost source cannot be taken at face value. How do we know the lost source is not an invention of the person who wrote the source we have? Is there trustworthy corroboration from another source? Without the alleged original source in our hands we cannot be sure it ever existed.
Well, when it comes to lost ancient sources, in most cases, there are multiple surviving sources written by different authors that independently reference the same lost source, so we can be sure that the source in question really existed.
Even if you don’t accept testimony from lost sources, though, there is still a ton of evidence for Alexander the Great’s existence. In my article above, I reference evidence such as Alexander’s own coins, minted with his name and face on them, the Priene inscription, which Alexander himself commissioned and which mentions him by name, the contemporary Babylonian chronicles, and tons of other pieces of evidence. If you’re still stubbornly trying to insist at this point that Alexander didn’t exist, you’re simply in denial of the evidence that I’ve already shown.
I would have to examine the evidence myself. For example, I would like to know if coins have been dated, which particular Alexander is named, was it an actual person or a representation of an ideal or symbol (like Britannia on old British coins) or a mythological person, like Cymbeline. Are the “contemporary Babylonian chronicles” kosher? How do I know? Sorry if I do not take your word for it, but c’est la vie. No need to get testy.
I love this article. I really enjoy learning how we can “really” know if someone existed historically. Speaking of which… Do you know if historians can say if Siddartha Guatama (aka the Buddha) or Mahavira (the founder of Jainism) existed historically or is their historicity debatable?
Fairly decent rebuttal.
Not a moment too soon! Having arguments online with such deniers is frustrating and also tragic. That said, do you think that in the case of certain historical characters (using off the top of my head personages such as Jesus, Ambosius Aurelianus aka ‘King Arthur’) that they may, in fact, be an amalgam of several real people and their achievements?
Personally your debunking efforts is just not enough justification. Why? From my understanding their were three ancient historians: Herodotus, Diodorus, and Manetho. Before even using these ancient historians as a source, it must be proven first that they themselves existed. If there is no irrefutable sources, then there is no legitimacy.
Very awesome! I was reading the Case for Christ (advice; don’t) where one of the scholars claimed we have no attestation of Alexander the Great until centuries afterwards. He makes it out as if the evidence of his existence is flimsy compared to Jesus (which Jesus imo was VERY likely real even if he didn’t do all of the more fantastical things he is said to have done) but to say that the evidence for Alexander the Great isn’t that good and that scholars accept his existence with minimal evidence is bull.
I don’t know what to think of this.
This sounds like bothering to convince a flat Earther that the planet is round.
The person who loses most is the one who by association with idiots risks being seen as half an idiot themselves.
When searching for academic articles on historic mentions regarding the body and grave of Alexander, coming across an article discussing the “evidence” for Alexanders’ existence is jarring.
Herodotus has mentioned Alexander in his history book and he died way before Alexander was born.Google it.
You’re thinking of entirely the wrong Alexander. There were several different Makedonian kings named “Alexandros,” in the same way that there were several different English kings named “Henry.” Herodotos mentions King Alexandros I of Makedonia, who ruled from 498 until 454 BCE. The man who is known today as “Alexander the Great,” however, is the entirely different and much later Makedonian king, Alexandros III, who ruled from the death of his father King Philippos II in 336 BCE until his death in 323 BCE.
It’s worth noting that Alexandros III was not the last Makedonian king to bear this name either; his son Alexandros IV was nominally king of Makedonia from his birth shortly after Alexandros III’s death in 323 BCE until he was assassinated in 306 BCE at the age of about thirteen years old.