If you’ve ever been on the internet or happened to turn on virtually any show that has aired on the History Channel within the past ten years, you’re probably aware that there are tons of people who are, shall we say, highly enthusiastic about so-called “unidentified flying objects” or “UFOs.” These UFO enthusiasts love to repeat a story which claims that the ancient Makedonian king Alexander the Great and his soldiers saw UFOs in the sky that looked like giant silvery shields at some point while he was on his campaigns.
The story that UFO enthusiasts keep repeating, however, is demonstrably entirely fictional. No version of the story ever appears in any ancient or medieval source. In fact, the earliest known mention of the story dates to the year 1959. Other people have debunked this story before, but I am going to debunk it again because UFO enthusiasts keep repeating it.
Giorgio A. Tsoukalos’s claim about Alexander seeing a flying saucer
A couple years ago, a cousin of mine who is several years younger than me introduced me to Buzzfeed Unsolved, which is a series on YouTube hosted by two young men named Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej which purports to investigate unsolved crimes and alleged supernatural occurrences.
The show blends spooky stories about bloody murders, disappearances, ghosts, and UFOs with gauche, irreverent humor. It’s frankly trashy entertainment, but, since my cousin introduced me to it, I have occasionally watched it on my own to give me something that isn’t intellectually demanding to watch while I prepare and eat dinner for myself in my apartment and I have watched more episodes of it than I care to admit.
When investigating alleged supernatural phenomena, the show generally at least makes a pretense of balancing credulous and skeptical perspectives, with Bergara being a believer in the supernatural and Madej being a skeptic. The problem is that Bergara is always the one presenting the evidence, his presentations are generally highly tendentious in favor of supernatural phenomena, and Madej deliberately avoids doing his own research beforehand, so he only knows what Bergara tells him, which prevents him from making serious objections to Bergara’s presentation of the evidence.
In any case, the series released an episode on 18 May 2018 titled “The Unexplained Phoenix Lights Phenomenon,” which, as of the time I am writing this, has 9,428,238 views. Near the end of the episode, they feature Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, a producer and permanent featured guest on the long-running History Channel television series Ancient Aliens, which first premiered on 8 May 2009 and has aired no less than seventeen seasons since then, amounting to a total of 196 episodes.
Bergara introduces Tsoukalos with the misleading title of “ancient aliens expert” and Tsoukalos very quickly tries to relate the Phoenix lights to alleged UFO sightings in antiquity. He says:
“What’s interesting is that Alexander the Great . . . [is said to have seen] giant flying shields. Giant shields that are glowing in the sky and just crossed, you know, over the lands. So, when you have these accounts of ancient flying shields up in the sky that are witnessed by armies, you have to wonder, well, were they all drunk? Were they all smoking? Or did they actually see something?”
Unfortunately for Tsoukalos, the “accounts” he mentions here simply do not exist. There are absolutely no references in any surviving ancient sources, whether of historical or fictional nature, to Alexander the Great having seen “giant flying shields” in the sky.
This is not even the worst of it, though; Tsoukalos could have easily found out that this story is a fabrication by doing a simple Google search for “Alexander the Great saw UFOs” or a similar phrase, because, as it happens, the historian Yannis Deliyannis wrote a detailed post on his blog Chronicon Mirabilium thoroughly debunking the hoax story all the way back in November 2009 and the post shows up on the very first page of Google results.
ABOVE: Screenshot of Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej speaking to Giorgio A. Tsoukalos in their episode about the Phoenix lights
Frank Edwards’s claim
Deliyannis’s post on Chronicon Mirabilium traces the claim that Alexander the Great saw “giant flying shields” back to the writer and broadcaster Frank Edwards, who wrote a book titled Stranger than Science, which was originally published in 1959 by Lyle Stuart, a publisher who was well known for publishing controversial works that other publishers wouldn’t touch. In the book, Edwards claims:
“Alexander the Great was not the first to see them nor was he the first to find them troublesome. He tells of two strange craft that dived repeatedly at his army until the war elephants, the men, and the horses all panicked and refused to cross the river where the incident occurred. What did the things look like? His historian describes them as great shining silvery shields, spitting fire around the rims… things that came from the skies and returned to the skies.”
Edwards does not cite any sources for any of these claims and it is unlikely that he ever had any. His assertion that Alexander’s army supposedly saw “great shining silvery shields” in the sky does not even remotely resemble any statement in any surviving ancient source about Alexander. This claim is probably completely made up.
The ancient sources about Alexander’s campaigns do mention “silver shields,” but not in the context of anything that could reasonably be construed as having anything to do with UFOs. The Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus, who most likely lived in around the first century CE or thereabouts, claims in his Histories of Alexander the Great 8.5.4 that, after Alexander won many victories and became effectively the sole ruler of all the territories formerly ruled by the Achaemenid Empire, he plated some of his own shields with silver. Curtius writes, in Latin:
“. . . itaque, necubi vinceretur, cum ceteris praestaret, scutis argenteas laminas, equis frenos aureos addidit, loricas quoque alias auro, alias argento adornavit. CXX milia armatorum erant, quae regem ad id bellum sequebantur.”
This means, in my own English translation:
“. . . indeed, so that he [i.e., Alexander] would never be outdone, when he stood out in other things, he attached silver plates to his shields and gold bridles to his horses, and he adorned some armors with gold and some other armors with silver. There were one hundred and twenty thousand of these armors, which followed the king into battle.”
It is highly unlikely that Alexander really had as many gold and silver armors as Curtius claims he had, but it is highly probable that he did have some shields and armor that were decorated with gold and silver in some fashion.
Evidently, members of one division of senior hypaspists (i.e., soldiers who fought bearing shields) in the Makedonian army who were serving under the command of Alexander’s officer Nikanor also plated their shields with silver and nicknamed themselves the Ἀργυράσπιδες (Argyráspides), which means “Silver Shields.” Many ancient historians mention this division and they characterize the men who were included in it as some of Alexander’s best and most experienced.
Once again, though, none of this has anything to do with UFOs.
ABOVE: Alexander and Porus, painted in 1673 by the French painter Charles le Brun
Alberto Fenoglio’s claim
Deliyannis’s post on Chronicon Mirabilium identifies a similar story claiming that Alexander the Great and his armies saw UFOs resembling flying shields flying in a triangular formation during the siege of the city of Tyre in 332 BCE.
This story, which may or may not be based on the story that had earlier been told by Edwards, can be traced back to the Italian UFO theorist Alberto Fenoglio, who published an article titled “Cronistoria su oggetti volanti del passato – Appunti per una clipeostoria” in the UFO periodical Clypeus, volume number nine (first semester 1966), page seven. Fenoglio writes, as translated by W. R. Drake in the book Gods and Spacemen in Ancient Greece and Rome:
“During the siege of Tyre in the year 332 BC, strange flying objects were observed. Johann Gustav Droysen in his History of Alexander the Great [Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen (1833)] does not cite it intentionally, believing it to be a fantasy of the Macedonian soldiers.”
“The fortress would not yield, its walls were fifty feet high and constructed so solidly that no siege-engine was able to damage it. The Tyrians disposed of the greatest technicians and builders of war-machines of the time and they intercepted in the air the incendiary arrows and projectiles hurled by the catapults on the city.”
“One day suddenly there appeared over the Macedonian camp these ‘flying shields’, as they had been called, which flew in triangular formation led by an exceedingly large one, the others were smaller by almost a half. In all there were five. The unknown chronicler narrates that they circled slowly over Tyre while thousands of warriors on both sides stood and watched them in astonishment. Suddenly from the largest ‘shield’ came a lightning-flash that struck the walls, these crumbled, other flashes followed and walls and towers dissolved, as if they had been built of mud, leaving the way open for the besiegers who poured like an avalanche through the breeches. The ‘flying shields’ hovered over the city until it was completely stormed then they very swiftly disappeared aloft, soon melting into the blue sky.”
Like Edwards before him, Fenoglio does not cite any sources whatsoever. (The only source he mentions is a modern secondary source that he explicitly admits does not mention the story.) And, unfortunately, once again, there are no surviving ancient sources that say anything even remotely close to what Fenoglio describes here.
The only ancient passage that even vaguely resembles anything close to what Fenoglio describes occurs in Quintus Curtius Rufus’s Histories of Alexander the Great 4.3.25–26. Curtius writes, in Latin:
“Clipeos vero aereos multo igne torrebant, quos repletos fervida harena caenoque decocto e muris subito devolvebant. Nec ulla pestis magis timebatur: quippe ubi inter loricam corpusque fervens harena penetraverat, nec ulla vi excuti poterat et, quidquid attigerat, perurebat, iacientesque arma laceratis omnibus, quis protegi poterant, vulneribus inulti patebant.”
This means, in my own translation, which I have tried to make as literal as possible:
“Indeed, [the Tyrians] were heating with much fire bronze shields, which, having been filled with heated sand and boiling dirt, they were suddenly hurling from the city walls. And no plague was feared more than this; for when the burning hot sand penetrated between the armor and the body, by no power could a man shake it out and, everything it touched, it burned. And [the soldiers], throwing away their weapons and tearing to pieces everything that could protect them, stood open to injuries, unable to retaliate.”
I suppose that this passage does technically mention flying shields during the siege of Tyre, but the shields are actual, literal shields made out of the bronze and they are only “flying” because the Tyrians are throwing them at Alexander’s soldiers from the walls of the city. This passage is clearly talking about defensive siege warfare, not UFOs in any sense.
It is possible that Fenoglio may have read Edwards’s claim about Alexander having seen “great shining silvery shields,” he may have gone searching for a source, and he may have found some version of the passage from Curtius describing the Tyrians hurling shields during the siege of Tyre. Then, it is possible that he may have badly misinterpreted the passage to make it about UFOs.
I, however, suspect that it is more likely that Fenoglio never read any of Curtius’s work, he made up the whole story about Alexander seeing flying shields during the siege of Tyre purely as an embellishment on Edwards’s earlier story, and his description just happened to bear a vague resemblance to something Curtius actually described.
In any case, the story that Alexander and/or his army saw UFOs that looked like silvery shields does not occur in any ancient source of any kind and is purely a modern invention. Moreover, the fact that a thorough debunking of this story has been so readily available on the internet for over a decade now demonstrates just how lazy or dishonest ancient astronaut theorists like Giorgio A. Tsoukalos are.
ABOVE: Illustration from the book The Illustrated History of the World for the English People, published in 1881, intended to represent Alexander the Great at the Siege of Tyre
This article and the earlier article on this blog about the Trojan Horse shows that there is a lot of nonsense written about ancient history by people who don’t know much about the subject who just wants to attract attention.
Indeed. I would say that a great deal of what has been written on the internet about ancient history is nonsense. That is part of why I write this blog. I try to correct the nonsense where I find it.
Supernatural aficionados and conspiracy flakes will believe what they want to believe and disregard the rest.
I mean should we really trust “ancient astronaut theorists” like Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, a man who has become a meme because of his ridiculous claims of aliens making contact with people in ancient times?
You are correct that nobody should ever trust Tsoukalos. The problem is that many people do trust him, even though they shouldn’t.
I posted a question on Quora some months ago about what the longest lasting form of government is? At this point I think it would be Imperial China, but I’m not sure what do you think?
I am not an academic or a historian but I guess it would either be Imperial China or Pharaonic Egypt.
Well, that’s kind of a trick question because the answer depends on what your criteria are for a single form of government.
Neither pharaonic Egypt nor imperial China was ruled by exactly the same state continuously for its entire history. There were long periods in the histories of both pharaonic Egypt and imperial China in which they were not unified under the rule of one state at all. Indeed, China spent the greater portion of its ancient history under the effective rule of various smaller, regional states, rather than a single imperial monarchy. There were also many points where different peoples with different cultural practices related to governance came to power. For instance, Egypt during its pharaonic history was at separate points ruled by the Hyksos, the Kushites, the Assyrians, the Achaemenids, and the Makedonians, while parts of China were ruled at various points in its “imperial” history by peoples whom the Han Chinese regarded as “foreign,” such as the Xianbei, the Khitans, the Mongols, and the Manchus.
Furthermore, in both cases, the systems of governance changed over time; they did not remain perfectly static. The rule of Egypt under the final Ptolemaic Dynasty was radically different from the rule of Egypt under the dynasties of the Old Kingdom from over two thousand years earlier. Likewise, the administration of the Qing Dynasty, China’s last imperial dynasty, was radically different from the administration of the Qin Dynasty of over two thousand years earlier, which is considered China’s first imperial dynasty, and certainly even more different from the administration of the even earlier Shang and Zhou Dynasties, which are not considered “imperial” dynasties.
I have read the Persian boy and a few other books on the subject of Alexander The. Great who was going to invade what I think is India the country but his war elephants where startled by lights that kept falling from the sky which his generals took to be lights from the gods and advised him not to invade the gods are intervening on the country behalf and actually talked him not to invade
Have you noticed that most popular ‘ancient’ myths like this one, the ’13 crystal skulls’, the Templars on Oak Island, etc can’t be dated back farther than the 1950’s and often not even that far back? Guess making up ancient history is easier than studying ancient history.
So, the only UFOs Alexander saw were Unusual Falanx Ornamentation and Underhanded Falling Ordinance?
I guess you could say that! (The word phalanx, however, is spelled with a ph, not an f.)
The most useful thing I ever read on U.F.O.s by a folklorist. He wrote that our society isn’t set up to resolve issues such as that. I think this article is a further demonstration of that. Articles about this subject are divided between those who believe U.F.O.s are alien space craft and the gov’t is trying to cover up the fact, and those who deny there’s any such thing as a U.F.O. Both positions are unreasonable, though the denialists are more illogical since it’s impossible to prove a negative and a believer may be basing her or his belief on experience.
When I walk along the streets of my home town, I can’t identify everything I see on the sidewalk and in the gutter – thankfully. How then can anyone identify everything one sees in the sky? Given how little information there is about many U.F.O. sightings, it’s simply impossible to identify them all no matter what one believes.
From the regularities in the descriptions of U.F.O.s, I surmise there is one main phenomenon behind the many sightings which aren’t well explained by known phenomena. From a distance this phenomenon appears to be a whitish-orange ball. When it gets close to the observer, it frequently appears as an intelligent super being or beings, eventually leaving the observer disoriented. This might be explained by an unknown form of plasma, the larger instances of which emit radio waves in the range of human nerve firings. 19 Hz radio frequencies have been implicated in just these sorts of hallucinations in some laboratory experiments. The advantage of this theory is that it encompasses many sightings from pre-industrial times which are not remotely of the flying saucer variety. Among these are visions of the sun dancing about in the sky, attested to by many in one famous incident in Portugal a century ago; numerous visions of the Virgin Mary and, earlier, pagan goddesses; and ghosts seen in rural areas at night.
Then again, these could also be experiences of the near ends of worm holes being established by aliens or future humanity for their own purposes. I think it best to keep an open mind on this matter since there is no public information which can either verify any of the many hypotheses claiming to explain U.F.O.s. As with occult experiences such as precognitive dreams, whole realms of experience are simply condemned without trial in order to maintain the current intellectual order.
On the other hand, you are certainly correct about the Alexander the Great legend. U.F.O. writers and investigators don’t have high standards and a great deal of checking and cross-checking is needed to verify or falsify even their simplest claims.
Here’s an interview with a well known scientist who investigated U.F.O.s for many years and came to some unusual conclusions: http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc839.htm
Here are some pre-industrial U.F.O. sightings: https://listverse.com/2016/04/05/10-ufo-sightings-that-pre-date-the-1900s/