Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

XLIV INTRODUCTION.
enlarged, and when he has become a mere memory
his name will be made a peg on which to hang
stories, legends, and myths. The details of the
Modifica- fabulous history of such an one will be modified
tions of the
story. to
.
suit
,
the
•
i i r i l
country and ideas ot the people among
whom the writers live, and eventually it will become
the popular expression of the national views
of each country through which the history passes
of what a hero should be. This is exactly what
has happened to the Alexander story in the hands
of Semitic and other writers. The Egyptians made
Alexander the son of an Egytian king and a
worshipper of Amen; the Greeks made him the
type of the victorious Greek conqueror; the Per-
Aiexander's sians made him a Persian; the Arabs made him
tion from a servant of Allah; the Syrians made him a Christian;
heathenism
to Christian-
and the Ethiopians depicted him as a believer in
"y- the Trinity and in the Christian doctrine of the
resurrection of the dead. In one respecu, however,
the Arabs and Ethiopians have modified the
legendary history of Alexander considerably, I
mean, that they have omitted a great many facts
which the Greeks and others considered to be
the most important events in his life. Alexander's
victory in the chariot races at Pisa, his conquest
of Thebes, his sovereignty over the Athenians, etc.,
find no equivalents in the Ethiopic versions, and
seemingly none in the Arabic texts from which
the Ethiopian translated his work. Taken as a
whole, however, the Ethiopic legendary histories
of Alexander are most valuable from many points