pothos.org

Here's the link: http://www.inform.kz/showarticle.php?lang=eng&id=151602

Apparently the sandbar stretched from the island fortress to the mainland. Alexander exploited this in his building of the mole. It still doesn't change the achievement, but it makes the Tyrians look even more stupid, for they must have known of the sandbar and they still didn't believe Alexander would stay and build on it.

Fascinating!

I read this the other day...

Interesting. But how do they explain the drop in water level close to the island described by the ancients?

If there was a sandbar, clever of ATG to utilise it, and yeas, you're right, very dumb of the Tyrians to ingnore it as a threat.

While I think that the "propaganda" machine has a bit of a hand in it...would the sandbar have filled in so quickly without the mole? There was construction on the mole in hellenistic times...right? So I think that one could safely say that it's a bit of both...though Alexander's own deforestation to actually build the mold probably moved things along...

According to these new findings, the sandbar ranged from 3 to 6 feet beneath the surface of the water... and the ancient sources do say the water was shallow most of the way across.

I think this story does put paid to the idea that the mole was built dead straight... obviously it must have followed the natural curves of the sandbar.

Even with this advantage, it took seven months to build the thing -- shows you that had the water been 50 or 30 or even 20 feet deep, the project would have been plain impossible, at least within Alexander's larger schedule.

I suspect that the Tyrians never suspected that anyone would build something on it. Why would they? I don't see them as stupid. Hindsight is always 2020. It's a matter of how you frame things in your mind, depending on your motivation. They'd see, as they'd always seen: "Sandbar: something for ships to watch out for." Alexander, looking for a way to get at the city without ships, since he had none, would think: "Sandbar: pathway."

Warmly,
Karen

karen wrote:
I suspect that the Tyrians never suspected that anyone would build something on it. Why would they? I don't see them as stupid. Hindsight is always 2020. It's a matter of how you frame things in your mind, depending on your motivation. They'd see, as they'd always seen: "Sandbar: something for ships to watch out for." Alexander, looking for a way to get at the city without ships, since he had none, would think: "Sandbar: pathway."

Warmly,
Karen

This is true, Karen...I suppose that it is an excellent example of Alexander seeing things, doing things that no one before him had ever thought of...

Didn't he have to start over at one point after the Tyrians had burned and wrecked his first one? He began anew with a wider one and going in a bit of a different direction. I'll have to look that up.

Deleted

of the poll are funny. Can't help but laugh. But seriously... Actually, he had to do this twice since thw towers were burned down. I have a very good film on Alexander that does show the building program at Tyre, and some of the machinery that was used there. There are several good busts and statuary of Alexander and Hephaestion on this film as well. I will try to recall name and title as it is in the local library.

I always wonder how Tyre would have responded had it been Philip instead of Alexander who attempted to enter the island and pay respect to the gods. Would they have reacted the same? In other words, was Alexander's youth a handicap for him at that time, so that few took him as seriously as they should have.

jan wrote:I always wonder how Tyre would have responded had it been Philip instead of Alexander who attempted to enter the island and pay respect to the gods. Would they have reacted the same? In other words, was Alexander's youth a handicap for him at that time, so that few took him as seriously as they should have.

Exactly the same: youth, or a lack of it, had little to do with it.

Alexander arrived at the time of the festival of Meqart. His request or, as it turned out, demand to sacrifice on the Island was effectively a demonstration of his sovereignty - the Tyrian king being away with the Persian fleet.

The response of the Tyrian ambassadors was a proclamation - absent their king - of neutrality. The sources don't say but it is no great sacrilege to assume that Alexander's "intelligence" people will have realised this: both the festival and the hoped for neutrality.

Philip was never one to balk at a religious pretext for war and neither, it seems, was his son. Having his desire to sacrifice where he wished denied - the island not the mainland - meant having the import of that island sacrifice denied: his sovereignty.

Alexander's reply, calculated beforehand IMO, was predictable and one of the more horrendously costly of his actions.