Pt1 The Talmudic Tales of Alexander the Great’s Adventures in Africa: The Mountains of Darkness, the City of Women, and the Waters of Eden (Tamid 32a-b)
This is the first part of a two-part series. The outline is below.
For the preceding sugya, see my recent series: “Alexander the Great’s Dialogue with the Elders of the Negev: Philosophical Insights on Creation, Life, and Power (Tamid 32a)“, Part 2 here.
Outline
Advice for Crossing the Mountains of Darkness to get to Africa
Encounter with the City of Women
Discovery of a Spring Linked to Eden
The Insatiable Human Eye
Cosmological Teachings on Gehenna
The Passage
Advice for Crossing the Mountains of Darkness to get to Africa
Alexander seeks advice from the Elders about waging war in Africa, but they warn him of the impassable Mountains of Darkness.1
Undeterred, Alexander is advised to use Libyan donkeys,2 adept at navigating in darkness, and to secure ropes to mark his path for the return journey.
Following this strategy, Alexander advances into Africa.3
אמר להן: בעינא דאיזיל למדינת אפריקי.
אמרו ליה: לא מצית אזלת, דפסקי הרי חשך.
אמר להן:
לא סגיא דלא אזילנא,
אמטו הכי משיילנא לכו,
אלא מאי אעביד?
אמרו ליה:
אייתי חמרי לובאי דפרשי בהברא.
ואייתי קיבורי דמתני,
וקטר בהאי גיסא,
דכי אתית (באורחא), נקטת בגוייהו ואתית לאתרך.
When Alexander was preparing to part from the Elders of the Negev, he said to them: I want to go to wage war against the country of Africa [Afriki]; what do you recommend?
They said to him: You will be unable to go there, as the Mountains of Darkness block the passes.
He said to them:
It is not possible for me not to go;
and it is due to this reason that I ask you to advise me. Rather than refraining from my campaign,
what might I do to cross the Mountains of Darkness?
They said to him:
Bring Libyan donkeys that walk even in the darkness [behavra], and these animals will guide you through those passes.
And bring coils of rope,
and tie one end of rope on this near side of the mountains, as you are about to enter there,
so that when you come to return by the same path, you may take hold of the ropes left from your initial march, and, following them, you will come back to your place.
Encounter with the City of Women
Alexander arrives at a city (מחוזא) inhabited solely by women.4
As he prepared to battle them, the women dissuaded him, reasoning that the situation was ultimately a no-win scenario for him, in terms of his reputation: defeating them would, in fact, tarnish his reputation (“they’ll say: the king who kills women”), while being defeated by them would destroy his legacy (“they’ll say: the king whom women killed”).
Instead, Alexander requested bread, and the women presented him with gold bread on a golden table, mocking his pursuit of wealth.
Realizing their wisdom, Alexander acknowledged his folly and later inscribed on the city's gate5 that he learned wisdom from the women of Africa.
עבד הכי,
ואזל מטא לההוא מחוזא דכוליה נשי.
בעי למיעבד קרבא בהדייהו,
אמרו ליה:
אי קטלת לן, יאמרו: נשי קטל.
אי (קטילנא) [קטלינן] לך, יאמרו: מלכא דקטלוה נשי.
אמר להן: אייתו לי נהמא.
אייתו ליה נהמא דדהבא אפתורא דדהבא.
אמר להו: מי אכלי אינשי נהמא דדהבא?!
אמרו ליה:
אלא אי נהמא בעית,
לא הוה לך באתרך נהמא למיכל, דשקלת ואתית להכא?
כי נפיק ואתי, כתב אבבא דמחוזא:
אנא אלכסנדרוס מוקדון,
הויתי שטייא עד דאתיתי למדינת אפריקי דנשיא,
ויליפית עצה מן נשיא.
Alexander did this and went on his campaign.
He came to a certain town whose entire population was women,
and he wanted to wage battle against them.
The women said to him:
It is not in your interest to fight us.
If you kill us, people will say: Alexander kills women;
and if we kill you, people will say: Alexander is the king whom women killed in battle.
Instead of fighting them, Alexander said to them: Bring me bread.
They brought him bread of gold, upon a table of gold.
Alexander said to the women: Do people eat bread of gold?!
They said to him:
But if all you wanted was actual bread,
didn’t you have bread to eat in your own place?! It was not for bread that you took up a campaign and toiled and came here. You must have come to increase your wealth.
When Alexander left and came back to his land, he wrote upon the gate of the town:
I, Alexander of Macedon,
was a fool until I came to the country of Africa of women,
and I learned sense from women.
The major themes in this sugya, including the “Mountains of Darkness”, already appear in a famous work called The Alexander Romance. On this work, see Wikipedia, “Alexander Romance“:
The Alexander Romance is an account of the life and exploits of Alexander the Great. Of uncertain authorship, it has been described as "antiquity's most successful novel". The Romance describes Alexander the Great from his birth, to his succession of the throne of Macedon, his conquests including that of the Persian Empire, and finally his death.
Although constructed around an historical core, the romance is mostly fantastical, including many miraculous tales and encounters with mythical creatures such as sirens or centaurs. In this context, the term Romance refers not to the meaning of the word in modern times but in the Old French sense of a novel or roman, a "lengthy prose narrative of a complex and fictional character" (although Alexander's historicity did not deter ancient authors from using this term).
It was widely copied and translated, accruing various legends and fantastical elements at different stages. The original version was composed in Ancient Greek some time before 338 AD, when a Latin translation was made, although the exact date is unknown […]
In premodern times, the Alexander Romance underwent more than 100 translations, elaborations, and derivations in dozens of languages, including almost all European vernaculars as well as in every language from the Islamicized regions of Asia and Africa, from Mali to Malaysia.
Some of the more notable translations were made into Coptic, Ge'ez, Middle Persian, Byzantine Greek, Arabic, Persian, Armenian, Syriac, and Hebrew. Owing to the great variety of distinct works derived from the original Greek romance, the "Alexander romance" is sometimes treated as a literary genre, instead of a single work […]
[He] writes letters to Olympias describing all he saw and his adventures during his conquests, including his wandering through the Land of Darkness, search for the Water of Life, and more.
חמרי לובאי. For another talmudic mention of a Libyan donkey (as an aside, Libya is in Africa), again in the context of its great value, see my piece here, where Rabban Gamliel uses one to bribe a corrupt Christian philosopher:
למחר, הדר עייל ליה איהו חמרא לובא.
The next day Rabban Gamliel brought the philosopher a Libyan donkey.
For another talmudic story of Alexander in Africa, see my piece here, on the debates of Geviha with Canaanites and Arabs mediated by Alexander.
As an aside, as I mentioned there, many of the inhabitants of the Roman province of Africa were Semitic Phoenician colonists, most prominently in Carthage.
See Wikipedia, “Alexander Romance“ (cited earlier) : “[He] makes the Amazons his subjects.“
And see Wikipedia, “Amazons“:
The Amazons (Ancient Greek: Ἀμαζόνες Amazónes, singular Ἀμαζών Amazōn; in Latin Amāzon, -ŏnis) were a people in Greek mythology, portrayed in a number of ancient epic poems and legends, such as the Labours of Heracles, the Argonautica and the Iliad. They were female warriors and hunters, known for their physical agility, strength, archery, riding skills, and the arts of combat. Their society was closed to men and they raised only their daughters and returned their sons to their fathers, with whom they would only socialize briefly in order to reproduce […]
The texts of the original myths envisioned the homeland of the Amazons at the periphery of the then-known world. Various claims to the exact place ranged from provinces in Asia Minor (Lycia, Caria, etc.) to the steppes around the Black Sea, or even Libya [in Africa…]
Discoveries of battle-scarred female skeletons buried with their weapons (bows and arrows, quivers, and spears) prove that women warriors were not merely figments of imagination, but the product of the Scythian and Sarmatian horse-centered lifestyle, however it is not known if these people were the inspiration for the Amazons of Greek mythology […]
The Talmud [=our sugya] recounts that Alexander wanted to conquer a "kingdom of women" but reconsidered when the women told him:
If you kill us, people will say: Alexander kills women; and if we kill you, people will say: Alexander is the king whom women killed in battle.
אבבא דמחוזא. For another talmudic sugya of inscriptions on city gates, see the end of the stories of R’ Bena’a, Bava_Batra.58a.14-58b.3 (with R’ Bena’a’s comments and revisions for each, which I elide here):
חזא דהוה כתיב באבולא:
״כל דיין דמתקרי לדין – לא שמיה דיין״
[….]
Rabbi Bena’a saw that it was written upon the gate (אבולא):
Any judge who is summoned to judgment is not considered a judge, as judges must be above reproach.
[….]
חזא דכתיב:
״בראש כל מותא – אנא דם,
בראש כל חיין – אנא חמר״.
[….]
Rabbi Bena’a also saw that it was written there:
At the head of all death am I, blood, i.e., people die from an excess of blood;
at the head of all life am I, wine, i.e., wine is what gives life.
[….]
כתיב אפיתחא דקפוטקיא:
״אנפק, אנבג, אנטל״.
Having related that incident, the Gemara notes that at the entrance of Kapotekiyya [=Cappadocia] it was written:
Anpak, anbag, antal, which are all names for the same measurement.
On the line “At the head of all death am I, blood”, i.e., people die from an excess of blood, see Wikipedia, “Bloodletting“:
The popularity of bloodletting in the classical Mediterranean world was reinforced by the ideas of Galen, after he discovered that not only veins but also arteries were filled with blood, not air as was commonly believed at the time.
There were two key concepts in his system of bloodletting. The first was that blood was created and then used up; it did not circulate, and so it could "stagnate" in the extremities. The second was that humoral balance was the basis of illness or health, the four humours being blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile, relating to the four Greek classical elements of air, water, earth, and fire respectively.
Galen believed that blood was the dominant humour and the one in most need of control. In order to balance the humours, a physician would either remove "excess" blood (plethora) from the patient or give them an emetic to induce vomiting, or a diuretic to induce urination.
For the preceding stories of R’ Bena’a in that sugya, see my previous series: “R' Bena’a the Sage and Sleuth: Solving Two Mysteries and Rising to Judgeship (Bava Batra 58a)“; part 2 here.