preview

Alexander The Great Research Paper

Better Essays

A poor former Soviet republic lies at the heart of the Macedonian conqueror's story RECENTLY FOUND MYSELF DAYDREAMING in a barren hotel lobby in southern Uzbekistan that stank of old meat and cheap Korean cigarettes, lazily conjuring the image of thousands of Macedonian troops marching by outside, on their way from the fabled Oxus River to Alexander the Great's palace at Samarkand. After four days on the road, I was also dreaming of a bath. "Passport!" the receptionist snapped, breaking my reverie. "There's no hot water, mind you," she said, handing me my key. "There's no cold water, either. Bring in your own. And the outhouse is out back." While such conditions may seem appalling for most Western visitors, they pale in comparison to what …show more content…

But Sogdiana has still been left behind as archaeologists have forged ahead with Alexandrian sites from Greece and Egypt to Iran and India. "You don't hear a lot about archaeological work being done in Central Asia," says Ian Worthington, a professor of history at the University of Missouri and author of Alexander the Great: Man and God. "But it's hard to tell whether little is being found or if it's just that little information is getting to the West." So what exactly were archaeologists learning about Alexander's longest and bloodiest campaign? This last summer, I traveled to the region to find out for …show more content…

"I got busy with other things," Karasev said with a shrug. "Zoroastrianism, nomads..." Since it hadn't rained in the region for weeks and the roads were passable, we decided to take a stab at visiting Tosh-kola. Karasev himself hadn't been back to see it in more than two decades, but he knew of a shortcut through a nature preserve that would get us to the base of the rock in three hours. We turned off the main highway a little south of Shahrisabz, whose tidy little museum, housing a small collection of pottery collected from long-gone Alexandrian forts in the area, is dominated by the looming, ravaged remains of Tamerlane's gargantuan palace. A few hours went by; the once-paved road had long ago crumbled into a precipitous dirt path. Villages were becoming smaller and farther apart, despite the fact that everyone we encountered on our way assured us that the next village was only three chakars (the distance a man's shout can carry across the mountains) away. Then the villagers' assurances began to change to warnings: government men ahead, a lot of armed soldiers up the road--which turned out to be somewhere between 150 and 200 soldiers in the nature preserve, smack between us and our destination. Should we just keep going, putting our faith in that tried-and-true chestnut: "Archaeologists, just

Get Access