Henry Bedford-Jones

Master of the World

Warsaw 2022

Contents

Master of the World

Master of the World

Alexander of Macedon had conquered most of the world, and his legions were rolling toward Carthage when–a wily little priest strangely presented to him the Sphinx Emerald.

THE Egyptians called it Sekhet-Amit, meaning “field of palm trees;” to the Romans, it was the Oasis of Jupiter Amon; we know it as Siwa Oasis, one of the ancient and sacredly renowned spots in the world, in the Sahara Desert, three hundred and fifty miles west from Memphis.

It is, and always has been, extremely difficult of access. In the old days before the practical Romans put that Asiatic beast, the camel, to work as a means of desert transport, to reach Siwa was almost impossible; and yet, from the earliest prehistoric time, kings and generals and many lesser men made the pilgrimage hither, and desert caravans from Mid-Africa to Carthage. For the oasis was sacred to Amon, father of the gods, and the oracle of Amon told the future to those who asked, and gave wisdom. So suppliants came to worship the god and seek the aid of the oracle.

In this February of 331 B.C., the spot was an area of about ten square miles, abundantly watered by springs and wells, with about a hundred thousand date palms and a luxuriant growth of olives, figs and other trees. One of the chief wells was accounted miraculous, because it was warm by night and cold by day, and still is so. Under the trees crouched a weird little old temple, home of the god Amon, the Zeus of the Greeks and Jupiter of the Romans.

To this far-famed spot was coming the even more renowned Alexander as a suppliant, a regal suppliant, for he had conquered Persia and Asia Minor and Egypt with his barbarous Macedonian army, and was now rumored to be marching on Carthage and Rome in order to complete his world-conquest and to pillage the West as he had pillaged the East. This rumor had run insistently for months, as Psammon was well aware.

Psammon, they called him; “Little Amon,” or more politely “The Little One.” He bore a Carthaginian name but only the priests knew it. This oasis was nominally Egyptian, but was at the edge of territory ruled by Carthage, and Egypt had fallen to pieces so the Carthaginian power was largely felt hereabouts.

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