Position:Home>History> What are the inaccuracies of the movie known as Alexander the Great?

* Ptolemy I is depicted recounting the story of Alexander in 283 B!.C!. The Lighthouse at Alexandria, seen in the background, was built during the reign of his son Ptolemy II, around 270 B!.C!.

* In the battle at Gaugeamela, the Persian army are shown wearing dark clothes!. In reality they were yellow and light purple!.

* In the "Director's Cut", Ptolemy implies that Alexander and Hephaistion died of typhus, which is transmitted by lice!. He refers to what Hephaistion drank, so the cause is more likely to be typhoid!. Historians believe typhoid may have killed Alexander because waters of Babylon were, and still are, notorious for it!.

* At the final scene, when Ptolomy is dictating to Cadmus, he mentions the date "the ten of June"!. The Julian Calendar, which is the first one to use this date, was established in 45 BC during the Roman period!.

* Horses are shod with modern nailed horseshoes!. The most probable horseshoes at the time of Alexander should have been leather and plants "booties" of Asian origin!. In the 1st century, Romans used leather and iron "hipposandals"!. Nailed iron horseshoes seem to have become adopted much later!.

* When Alexander is reading a papyrus scroll, English words can clearly be seen!.

* On the map of the then known world the Black See is correctly spelled as Pontos Euxeinos (Greek) but the Mediterranean reads as Mare Mediterraneum, which is Latin, but the Romans called it Mare Nostrum (our sea) or Mare Internum (inner sea) on their maps!. In the fifth century BCE Herodotos called it the Pontos Boreios (northern sea)!.

* The fruit bowl next to Ptolemy contains Fuji apples, which were not available in 283 B!.C!.

* The chest wound that nearly cost Alexander his life during the Indian campaign took place inside a walled city in what is now Multan, Pakistan, not in a forest as depicted in "Alexander!."Www@QuestionHome@Com

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