Sometimes a ufo story gets into one’s mind and demands further investigation. The investigation could be to add detail or to simply verify whether to believe it or not. UFO documentaries that deal with ancient/historical encounters have been shown on TV in great numbers, and do a good job of presenting plenty of evidence that this phenomenon has been around a lot longer than 1947. It is hard to imagine that some of those Renaissance paintings and Egyptian carvings could be anything BUT UFOs. In fact, the paintings show astonishing accuracy in their portrayal of the UFO forms, so much so that it invites one to believe that sightings in those days were more frequent and/or more prolonged than we realize today. These people were just as intelligent as we are (maybe more so because I think we have devolved in the last 200 years) but they were also less learned. One would have expected these ancient UFO portrayals to be very mythical and/or biblical-like, with horns and spewing flame and smoke, but this is not the case. The surprising thing to me is that they appear to be quite scientific and technological. This lends credence to both the reality of UFOs and the theory that they have been around a long time.
Many UFO believers are far too willing to believe any UFO story that comes along, and also think that every moving light in the sky is a UFO. One should not believe every UFO story that one hears, and conversely, one should decide for oneself that some cases that are generally regarded as hoaxes are not. An example is the Maury Island Incident. This sighting occurred June 21, 1947, which is about two weeks before
So there exist examples of UFO stories that were originally thought to be hoaxes, yet now are probably true. Another example is the Aztec, NM crash retrieval, documented by Frank Scully in his 1950 book, “Behind the Flying Saucers.” This book is a godawful mess in my opinion. The pseudo scientific baloney in it about magnetism is really bad. The quality of this book is likely what torpedoed this UFO story. Frank Scully should be given credit for one thing though. He must have been a very perceptive man because his book contains lots of statements about the UFO coverup and this was in 1950! Perhaps some of his complaints about the coverup caused some disinformation to be leaked about the crash, reducing the story’s believability down to near zero. This story was vilified for over 50 years, but now, due to the work of Scott and Suzanne Ramsey, it is gaining credence.
But then there are stories which are generally held to be true but which are probably false. The remainder of this writeup will deal with a case which appears on nearly 100% of the “ancient astronaut” and “ancient UFO” TV documentaries.
One story in almost all ancient, historical UFO documentaries that grabbed my imagination and would not let go is the story of Alexander the Great’s two encounters with UFOs. The mystique of UFOs combined with a flashy, larger than life historical figure like Alexander is a super attention grabber. The story is that a UFO shot an opening in the walls of
The first and simplest thing that could be done would be to find out who the Alexander scholars of the world are and then ask them the simple question, did Alexander encounter UFOs or not? The kind of scholar to look for would be an objective professor who works at a respected university teaching ancient Greek history, specializing in Alexander the Great. This kind of person certainly used to exist and probably still does, but an internet search did not yield any names worth following up on. A person who makes his living outside of academia lecturing and writing about Alexander the Great probably would not be sufficiently trustworthy. There was an excellent academic, Lionel Pearson, who died in 1970. In 1960, he wrote “The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great” which is his discussion on questionable and/or disputed events during Alexander’s campaigns based on the writings of people who were known to be actually in attendance with Alexander during his campaigns. His book shows that he has read most everything on Alexander, and he read it in the native language of the authors as well. Most impressive. Another was probably C.A. Robinson who was a professor in Auckland, NZ who retired in 1986 and may be deceased by now. Had he retired more recently, I would have written to his university to ask the question which one would hope he would have taken seriously and not disdain to answer. Asking the Alexander/UFO question to a scholar who has dedicated his life to the study of ancient Greece and perhaps Alexander the Great would be kind of a downer for that scholar, wouldn’t it? This kind of sounds like the Kurt Vonnegut story of the science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout, who wrote a story of a man who worked for years to build a time machine. He built it because he wanted to see how tall Jesus was. He finally succeeded and arrived at the crucifixtion. He took a ladder and went up to Jesus on the cross and measured his height. Per the story, “Jesus was 5 feet one inches long.” The point is that there are probably a lot more important questions to ask an Alexander scholar than whether Alexander was helped by a UFO or not.
From this point onward, this writeup will use “AtG” for “Alexander the Great” just to speed up the reading.
Without an Alexander scholar to ask a simple yes/no question to, the second and most obvious thing to do for a start was to search the internet to see if any valid looking sources could be found. What emerged was some names of people who were associated with this story plus one historian. The names were Alexander Donski, Bruno Mancusi, Frank Edwards, and Johannes Droysen, historian. Bruno Mancusi openly states on the web that he could not trace the origin of the Alexander UFO story. He mentions his correspondence with Donski on this subject, but still came up with no literary or historical reference, meaning that Donski did not know who the alleged historian was either. Mancusi’s treatment of this story on the web is very respectable, and concludes with the remark, “So this story remains very dubious.” Alexander Donski is a Macedonian who actively promotes anything Macedonian, such as Alexander the Great, and why not? People from Illinois really like and promote Abe Lincoln. Nothing wrong with that. Mr. Donski never did reveal his sources for his claim on AtG’s UFO encounters; in fact, he corresponded with Bruno Mancusi to try to find out more abut the original source of this story. Working together, the two ufologists (Mancusi and Donski) found 5 references to the AtG/UFO story.
1. The first is from Frank Edwards. Frank Edwards wrote of AtG’s UFO encounter(s) in 1963 (1st U.S. edition in 1959) in “Stranger than Science”. The quotation from Edwards’ work is copied here from Mancusi’s website: “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." No references are supplied by Mr. Edwards.
2. A quote from a work by Alberto Fenoglio, written in Italian in 1966, is supplied which is partially reproduced later in Mancusi’s website under Mancusi’s discussion of Drake which follows below. The part that is missing references the historian Droysen who Fenoglio claims found the UFO story but refused to put it into his book on AtG because it was just too fantastic to believe. Here is a computer translation (bold emphasis is my own) of that part of the quote:” During I besiege of Shooting in year 332 to C. they have been notices
you of the strange flying objects. Giovanni Gustavo Droysen in its
work “L' siege of Shooting During l' siege of Shooting nell' year 332 to C. they have been noticed of the strange flying objects. Giovanni Gustavo Droysen in its work " History of Alexander the Grande" intentionally it does not cite, thinking it delivery of fantasy of the macedoni soldiers. The fortress did not yield, its walls towards earth was high one fortnight of meters and constructed cos=EC solidly that nobody machine d' siege was in a position to damaging them. The tirii they had pi=F9 the great technicians and constructors of blot some from war of the time and intercepted for air the incendiarie arrows and he projects hurled them from the catapults on the citt=E0.” How Fenoglio knew about Droysen’s decision to leave that UFO story out of his history is not supplied (Please realize that Droysen wrote his history in 1833, and Fenoglio is referring to a piece of information that he claims Droysen refused to use in his history. Does this mean that Fenoglio had access to Droysen’s 133 year old discarded source material? Doubtful.) No other references are supplied.
3. The third reference is from Gordon Creighton who in 1970 wrote about UFOs harassing a river crossing being attempted by AtG’s troops and elephants. Frank Edwards is listed as the source, but again, no classical source is given.
4. W. Raymond Drake wrote about the UFO incident in 1976. He gives two sources for the story: one is Frank Edwards, and the second is a quotation of Droysen through Fenoglio (see #2). He then quotes both Edwards and Droysen. Edwards’ quote is accurately reproduced, while Droysen’s quote is completely false as we will see from my Droysen translation of the fall of Tyre. Mancusi criticizes Drake’s work as mistakenly interpreting the incident as two separate occurrences and that Fenoglio does not quote Droysen. First of all, Drake really does refer to two incidents. The first incident is Edward’s and it refers to a river crossing using elephants. Alexander did not acquire elephants until he defeated Porus in India in 326BC. Furthermore, the river being crossed is generally thought to be the Indus because that is in India. The siege of Tyre is the incident attributed to Droysen, but as we will see, Droysen did not mention UFOs which is what Drake’s supposed quote from Droysen contains. Therefore, Drake’s quote of Droysen through Fenoglio is completely incorrect; clearly, Drake did not translate Droysen but copied Fenoglio’s story about Droysen. Second, Mancusi is correct in saying Fenoglio does not quote Droysen, but Fenoglio certainly refers to Droysen in his (Fenoglio’s) work.
5. This reference is from a dead website. A quote from that website is given that the river crossing harassment incident occurred in 329BC while AtG’s elephants were crossing the Jaxartes River. First of all, if Alexander reached the Jaxartes river at all, it was around 327 BC, not 329 BC. Second of all, if Alexander used elephants at all it was not until he captured them from Porus in India in 326BC. This story only becomes consistent with known history when one shifts it to 326BC and to the Indus river. No references are supplied.
Mr. Mancusi’s website is at http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case491.htm
The summary the 5 preceding sources shows that they are mostly derived from Frank Edwards’ 1963 book because his publication date of 1963 is first by 3 years (or 7 years if they used the first U.S. edition published in 1959). Since then his story has been picked up by other folks like Donski, etc, and it has been repeated ever since both to each other and everyone down the line, including those writers who put together the TV documentaries. At least, that is my current hypothesis. Second, they contain many errors which makes them of questionable accuracy if not truthfulness. The only tantalizing thing from them is the translation from Italian to English of Fenoglio’s claim that the respected historian, Droysen, knew of but refused to use the UFO story due to its fantastic nature. All five sources did not and probably could not cite a historical source for the UFO story.
A logical first step was look for Droysen, whose name appeared in Bruno Mancuso’s web page. Droysen’s historical work, “Geschichte Alexanders des Grosen” 1833, exists on the web. It has never been translated into English, but it is posted on Google Books and can be read in its entirety there. In Droysen’s coverage of the fall of Tyre, no UFOs are mentioned. Droysen is reputedly a good historian so one cannot imagine him deliberately leaving out something as important as UFO assistance at Tyre. Instead, if he wanted to maintain AtG’s credit for the Tyre seige, he would have explained away or minimized the UFO help instead of just leaving it out. The computer translation from Droysen, page 237, is reproduced here (the bold emphasis is my own) and it clearly shows that the Tyre wall breach was accomplished with conventional siege weapons of the period:
“…ballists, catapults, storm supports or like on board had, distributed themselves ring around the island to land with the instruction, either where it are possible to anchor or within range of fire under the walls and in such a way to fire at the Tyrier from all sides that they, irresolutely, would succumb where to most danger or protection was the more easily to the storm. The machines began to work, from all sides flew projectiles and stones against the Zinnen, at all points seemed the city endangered, when suddenly the part of the wall, on which it had foreseen Alexander, destroyed collapsed and a substantial breach opened. Immediately the two vehicles with armed ones attached the drop bridges in the place of the machine ships, were down-let, the Hypaspisten hurried over the bridge, Admetos were first on the wall, which first, which fell; by the death of its leader inflammation, under the eyes of the king, who already followed with the Agema, the Hypaspisten penetrated; soon the Tyrier from the breach was displaced, soon a tower, soon second conquered, the wall occupied, which embankment course after the king castle freely, the king let which take, because from there more easily into the city was to be down-come. Meanwhile the ships of Sidon, Byblos, into the south port, had penetrated Arados whose check chains had blown up them, had partly bored, on the bank had partly driven the ships lying there into the reason; likewise the zyprischen ships had run into the north port and the bulwark and the next points of the city had already occupied. [Pg 238] the Tyrier had everywhere withdrawn itself, before the Agenorion had collected themselves to sit down there closed to weirs. There the king with the Hypaspisten moved, these last heaps of the Tyrier regulatory from the port side Koinos with the Phalangiten against by the king castle; after short, most bloody fight also these were mastered and annihilated. Eight thousand Tyrier found death. The remainder of the inhabitants, so far it did not escape, at thirty thousand humans, into the slavery were not sold.”
So much for Droysen. He clearly is not the source of the UFO story, and even if he were, then which classical source did he use?
Over history, there have been dozens of AtG historians. Very many of these have never been translated into English. The quality of some of these histories is poor as well, as the so-called historians who wrote them sometimes aggrandize and even deify AtG. Indeed, even during AtG’s lifetime many people who wrote about him would invent false stories to get people to read their work or to prove his godliness. AtG may have actually believed himself to be a god so these stories really did not anger him but amused him. It is very possible that there may have been one “historian” who did write the UFO story and somehow Frank Edwards learned of it. Because the internet search failed to give results, a last resort was to survey the historic literature for the UFO information.
Fortunately, there’s a shortcut that can be taken that bypasses the need to read every single historian’s account of AtG’s exploits to get at the UFO story. The shortcut is this: every history ultimately boils down to gathering the accounts of those who were there and who wrote about it or dictated it plus any archeological evidence to corroborate those accounts. If no one leaves a record of their experiences, then the historian has to gather the writings of other historians before him to write his own history, weighing and judging as he goes to select what he thinks the truth may have been. Alexander left Greece with about 40,000 men and along his 11 year journey got reinforced with many more, such that when he decided to quit the expedition and leave India, his army numbered 100,000. At that time, most of his army was not Greek/Macedonian, but Persian and possibly some Indians. It is mainly from the Greek and Macedonaian returnees that a few eyewitness accounts have been recorded, although there are some references in “oriental sources” which I will address later. These few returnee writers are the source from whom all the fairly accurate histories about AtG have sprung. Because Alexander’s great deeds occurred so long ago, in some cases only fragments of these accounts survive, and in other cases no fragments have survived except as in discussions and direct quotations embedded in the works historians who wrote about AtG several hundred years later who had direct access to those original works which were subsequently lost after the historian wrote his own history. Further, there are fragments or literary references to events in AtG’s exploits by complete strangers who may or may not have been contemporaries of AtG, and who may or may not have been with AtG on his campaigns. The historian is left with the daunting job of not only sorting out fact from fiction, but also has to sort through the opinions of these prior sources as well.
By 100AD to 500AD, writers had written tons of material about ATG, and most of it was still available as source material to the historians of this time period. But nowadays, the only complete ancient writing about AtG that survives intact today is by Diodorus who wrote of AtG around 30AD. Even during AtG’s lifetime, many authors were writing about him, and a big percentage of this stuff was sheer flattery, aggrandizement, and deification. The early historians had the job of sorting through this material to select what they, as historians, concluded was factual. In the case of Alexander, there are only 20 sources known who accompanied AtG’s expedition or were of such an age that they might have done so; i.e. they were contemporaries of AtG. I’ve read that these 20 names are all available in Jacoby’s “Fragments der Griechischen Historiker”. Of these, about 9 wrote of their experiences on ATG’s expedition. All their writings are available only in fragments, and some of their writings are known only as direct quotes or detailed descriptions of later writers. These men are:
Onesicritus of Astypalaea—This man was educated in philosophy, and was a steersman on one of AtG’s ships. His writings show a taste for the strange and the marvelous. He is considered to be an exaggerator and not a reliable source.
Nearchus of Crete—This man is considered to be a reliable source but his work covers only the sea voyage home from India. Therefore, he cannot be the source for the alleged UFO stories.
Aristobulus—He was one of Alexander’s military engineers and considered to be a reliable, sober source of AtG’s deeds, especially the military engagements.
Ptolemy-- He was one of Alexander’s generals and considered to be a reliable, sober source of AtG’s deeds. He is considered to be the best source on AtG’s military engagements.
Cleitarchus—It is not even known that this man was with the expedition, but for sure he was the most popular writer about Alexander of his time. He lived at the time of AtG and would invent false stories about AtG for the sake of effect. He felt it was justifiable to “dramatize” the deeds of AtG to gain attention and readers. Not a reliable source.
Callisthenes of Olynthus—He was AtG’s public relations official whose job was to send news back to home. He got in trouble with AtG before the India campaign, and was either jailed or executed. He certainly cannot be the source of the India UFO story. He did not survive the expedition. He is the only person who wrote his surviving information while AtG’s expedition was occurring, unlike all the rest who wrote many years after the expedition was over. His work is considered to be that of a flatterer and exaggerator and is not considered reliable.
Chares—He was AtG’s chamberlain; i.e. he was the arranger of court affairs for AtG. He is used as a source for palace and court activity descriptions by historians.
Ephippus—This man was on the expedition and disliked AtG very much. Rarely used as a source. No job description.
Medeius—This man was the host of AtG’s final dinner where he became ill and later died. No job description.
This is only 9 names. The sources mentioned in this writeup contain about 4 more, and the remainder of the 20 I don’t know, but are available from Jacoby’s book which was not used as a source. The first 7 account for probably 90% of the original source information about AtG. The remainder of the 20 are known by historians only through a fleeting reference of other authors and a few fragments. By this time, it was becoming apparent that the mainstream AtG historians would not be the source for the UFO story; instead, historical fragments pertaining to AtG were looking more and more likely as the place where the UFO story would be if it existed at all.
Lionel Pearson’s book, “The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great”, 1960, and which discusses many fragments of AtG information was studied for any hint of the UFO story as well as 13 pages of fragments from C.A. Robinson’s book, “The History of Alexander the Great”, 1953. One of the most important works on AtG is by a very respected historian who was a military man. His name is Arrian and he wrote “The Campaigns of Alexander” in about 150 AD. His book was also studied for any reference to UFOs. None of these works mentions the UFO stories. Arrian, being a military man as well as a historian, used as his primary sources Ptolemy and Aristobulus because of their own military expertise. It must be emphasized that the Tyre UFO incident occurred during military conflict, yet it is not even mentioned in Arrian’s book. Pearson’s book, on the other hand, draws upon just about every AtG source known and is heavily footnoted. In it, he discusses the sources of AtG’s historical information (i.e. Ptolemy, Aristobulus, Cleitarchus, Callisthenes, Chares, Nearchus, Onesicritus, etc) and other historians of AtG, such as Plutarch, Arrian, Diodorus, Droysen, etc. The UFO incidents are not mentioned in his book either.
To give you an example of what these historians believe to be a fantastic claim in the life of AtG, here is a story that appears in all writers’ AtG histories The story is that the queen of the amazons came to his camp and asked to have his baby. Historians generally agree that this never happened. Wouldn’t you agree that the UFO story is just as fantastic, if not more so, yet all historians believe the amazon story as worthy of telling even though they then dispute it in their texts, yet none appear to mention the UFO story. It was at this point that it began to seem like the search effort was trying “to prove a negative” which is said to be impossible. In this case it would be possible if one read everything in existence about AtG and then found nothing about UFOs, but I could not do that.
Babylonian tablets have been discovered which discuss AtG. Most of them discuss the battle of Gaugamela, and say nothing of
http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/alexander_z1.html
I could find no AtG information written by authors from
In the future, it is likely more and more AtG fragments will still be popping up from archaeological discoveries of near east clay tablets and papyri. Perhaps some more Greek and Roman lost history fragments will show up as well. While these future discoveries will be eagerly studied to refine our reconstructed life of AtG, my prediction is that they won’t mention the UFO story either. Based on the sources listed here, not even the writers of flattery and sensationalism mentioned the UFO story. And even if one of them did, none of the serious and sober historians would have believed it whether they lived in either ancient OR modern times. This is because if you are reading say 10 histories about a battle, and only one history out of the 10 mentions a highly spectacular occurrence during that battle that no other of those histories mentions, then that one history is probably false. This is very likely to be the case here. Let’s face it. If there really had been a UFO occurrence in AtG’s battles, that would be the talk of the age among the writers of that day, for that would have meant intervention by the gods for or against Alexander who had aspirations of his own about being a god. This means it would not be so hard now to find a reference to it. Plus there was no UFO coverup then to suppress it as there is now. Therefore, there was never a UFO incident during Alexander the Great’s campaigns.
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