Ripple Timeline: WI Alexander Conquered Arabia?

Why would he attack Arabia instead of Carthage or Rome?

That's a fair question. Of the three possibilities of Carthage, Arabia, and Rome, Rome was almost certainly never an option. The peninsular holds nothing particularly interesting at this point, as the Romans are not yet totally dominant, they haven't come into conflict with Magna Graecia yet, and they have no famous achievements to particularly speak of. You have to remember that Alexander was something of a glory hound, and Italy has none of that sparkle for him.

Now, of the two remaining options, Carthage was a likely opportunity. It was the traditional enemy of Greece, and Alexander put a lot of stock in panhellenic ideology. At least, to begin with. I'm of the school of thought that says that whole line of thinking was mostly for propoganda purposes and not really the way he thought. So for my mind that's a reason against Alexander choosing Carthage. Additionally, the Testament that stated an objective of conquering Carthage is of very dubious connection to Alexander himself, so that is not a good piece of evidence to consider. But in Carthage's favour, it controls some of the most productive grain regions in the entire Mediterranean at this point and is hugely rich.

Arabia may seem an odd choice, but there are at least some sources indicating that it was a place he had plans to conquer. Additionally, the region was more fertile around modern Yemen than in modern times, especially due to the native Arabic irrigation that had been developed including the ancient Ma'rib dam. Also, control of Arabia meant controlling all trade between the Mediterranean and India, as Aden was on the route between the Red Sea ports of Egypt and India. Indeed, in OTL this is why Aden became such a wealthy city. Arabia was also the producer of many of the ancient world's rarest spices, especially Frankinsence.
 
Time to ressurect this thread! For any who were interested, I apologise for the halt in activity. I have to offer the extremely cliched excuse of real-life issues to explain why. In recompense, I begin not with a resumption of the timeline, but a complete list of the Kings of the Argead Empire and some hopefully enlightening texts. Enjoy!

Rulers of the Argead Empire

Alexander IV 318-288 BC
Alexander V 288- 240 BC
Phillip V 240- 229 BC
Amyntas V 229-225 BC
Alexander VI 225- 216 BC
Eurydice I 216-194 BC
Alexander VII 194-167 BC
Cyrus 167-163 BC
Archelaus III 163-126 BC
Alexander VIII 126-115 BC
Phillip VI 115-107 BC
Eurydice II 107-105 BC
Artaxerxes 105-94 BC
Ptolemy 94-91 BC
Periklytos 91-86 BC
Ptolemy 86-85 BC
Periklytos 85-71 BC
Anasandros 71-52 BC
Alexander IX 52-32 BC

NB: The numbering is due to the perception that this line is a direct continuation of the Macedonian Kings. Whilst over time 'King of Macedon' becomes a claim rather than reality, it is the most important title to the kings on this list of primarily Macedonian/Greek/Hellenised affiliation.

The Administration of the Argead Empire
Chloe Rosenbaeur


Excerpt from Introduction
From the very beginning, the Argead Kings were in a unique position; they were not the first dynasty from outside of the Near East to rule it, but they now ruled both the native peoples of the region and its previous conquerors. The ‘cradle of civilisation’ had already experienced thousands of years of organised, bureaucratic, legalistic government, but the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire had now opened it to new ideas and practices. First came the Greek language, both the Macedonian dialect and later ‘Koine’ Greek which grew out of the international ties of the new Hellenistic world. After that came Greek settlers, Greek thought, Greek traditions. These would all colour the Argead Empire and would produce a unique culture that was both indisputably hellenic and yet something completely separate.
Excerpt from Chapter 2: Linguistics and Administration

When the descendants of Alexander III first began to consolidate his ‘spear-won land’, they found themselves encountering peoples with literary traditions reaching back thousands of years, and it was out of the question that Greek would displace classical languages such as Aramaic, Elamite, Sanskrit and Akkadian overnight. Additionally, several of these languages had become bound up with the bureaucracy that had maintained Near Eastern Empires for more than 500 years, and few in the Hellenosphere had ever encountered them. Therefore the Argead system had no choice but to integrate the Achaemenid bureaucracy at first, simply to administrate the vast territories at its disposal. The languages that had been used by Persia were principally Elamite and Aramaic. To begin with, the Argeads renewed an even older tradition by double copying all official documents, a practice previously used in the Late-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires, in both Aramaic and Greek.
This fulfilled several functions; the switched emphasis from Elamite to Greek encouraged the Persian nobility of the Empire to learn the language, and further merge with the newer Macedonian/Greek class. The continued use of Aramaic enabled the inclusion of the still-large Aramaic-speaking community in the administration of the Empire. It also increased the familiarity of Greek-speaking civil servants with the Aramaic language and the alphabet that it used.

However, over time the Greek language began to displace Aramaic in much of the regions it was previously dominant in, along with the Greek alphabet. This seems to have been due to the fact that the major cities of the Argead Empire (and the Hellenosphere generally) were based around Greek and Macedonian colonists. This process is part of what scholarship has tended to call the Mesopotamian Rennaissance, the rebirth of strong urban culture centered around Babylonia. This is reflected in what records are preserved from this later period, which are found to have been exclusively written in Greek.

Due to the use of perishable materials for administrative documents, much has been lost to the ravages of time. What has been preserved has tended to be papyrus documents that ended up buried, fragments of wooden inscriptions, and those laws that were inscribed on stone monuments. However, historians have been gifted with the discovery of a remarkable set of clay tablets from the mid 2nd Century BC. The Susa Tablets are a throwback to an earlier period in the region’s history, using the Cuneiform script and the Akkadian language. They claim to be the personal diary of Queen Roxanne IV of the Argead Dynasty, who was the wife of Archelaus III. This has been heavily disputed, as the mystery continues to be why a woman brought up in the Greco-Persian aristocracy would ever be interested in Cuneiform, a script that was used almost exclusively by Assyrian and Babylonian priests. No matter the reason, it offers a rare glimpse into the workings of the Argead civil service, a topic which the extant literature of the Empire rarely touches. A more detailed summary and analysis will occur later in the chapter.
 
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