In his important study “Pharaoh Alexander: A Scholary Myth?”, Samuel Burstein argued that Alexander the Great was not crowned Egyptian pharaoh and even limited his participation in Egyptian religious affairs to a minimum. I will focus on the question of how and in which way Alexander tried to achieve legitimation for his claim to power over Egypt. For this purpose I will carefully try to distinguish between the deeds of the historic Alexander on the one hand, and the Alexander in Greek literature and Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions on the other. My conclusion is firstly that Alexander tried to establish himself as a counter image of Cambyses. Secondly, I will reinterpret the events in Siwa. This will show that Alexander in Siwa gained legitimation for an Egyptian crowning ceremony. We cannot prove that Alexander was crowned but if my interpretation of Siwa is correct, there was at least no obstacle for Alexander being crowned pharaoh in Memphis.
Stefan Pfeiffer is Professor for “The Ancient World and Europe” at the Technical University of Chemnitz/Germany. His area of specialisation are the history of Greco-Roman Egypt, royal and imperial cults in antiquity and cultural contacts between Rome and the East. He has among other aspects worked on multilingual texts from Egypt (the Decree of Canopus and the victory stela of C. Cornelius Gallus). Recently he has published a book on the imperial cult in Egypt (Steiner Verlag 2010). Furthermore he is currently working in an interdisciplinary project on editing a dossier of texts on Boethos, a Ptolemaic state official, and preparing a study on the reception of Roman peace propaganda in the eastern empire.