So this Wednesday we hit Alexander the Great. I was thinking in class about who the most known people of all time are, and trying to remember the first time I heard about Alexander the Great. I’m pretty sure it was my brother who told us about the Gordian knot when he learned about it, which was some time in elementary school. I was thinking in terms of historical figures, Jesus, definitely more famous, Alexander the Great, Socrates, and maaaaybe Napoleon are the most commonly known historical figures.
The pictures above are actually Alexander the Great who features as a major character in the Yu Gi Oh (anime, from Japan) offshoot Capsule Monsters. (This reminds me of the whole Aslan-is-Jesus thing from the Chronicles of Narnia, but where that was hinted, this was straight up “My name is Alexander. Like you I also ruled Egypt at one point.)
How much time did he spend cultivating this image? I imagine any memorable leader has learned the importance of building a legacy. [Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “The World was Wide Enough fades in]
But then again, at least in archaic Greece, Powell emphasized that authority in Greece didn’t come from divine sources. But in Egypt it did, so maybe that was something he adapted.