Alexander

Ptolemy I is depicted recounting the story of Alexander in 283 B.

The Lighthouse at Alexandria, seen in the background, was built during the reign of his son Ptolemy II, around 270 B.

In the battle at Gaugeamela, the Persian army is wearing dark clothes.

Their uniforms were yellow and light purple.

When Alexander rides towards the elephant of the Indian King, his sword is obviously waggling as though made of rubber.

When speaking to his troops at the riverside in India, Alexander's sword switches from the left to his right side in one shot.

In the theatrical version of the movie the scar on Old Ptolemy's forehead switches sides halfway through his first scene.

After being wounded in the battle against the Indian king, Alexander is carried on a shield.

First, his sword lies on his chest, then under his shoulder.

When Alexander tries to ride the wild black horse, the ropes are crossed.

In the next shot, they are in place.

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 that typhoid killed Alexander because waters of Babylon were, and still are, notorious for it.

When Alexander is riding towards the warrior on the elephant, the arrows in his horse's shoulder blades disappear and reappear between cuts to Alexander and the elephant.

In the final battle, before Alexander would ride towards the elephant, he is seen holding a spear, even waving it and pointing with it to his men to move forward.

One second later he is carrying a sword, with the spear nowhere to be seen.

At the final scene, when Ptolemy is dictating to Cadmus, he mentions "the tenth of June".

The Julian Calendar, the first one to contain that date, was established in 45 BC.

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.

Many scenes were re-ordered in the "Final Cut.

" For example, Alexander's childhood is seen in flashback, not at the beginning, in chronological order.

However, the end credits are the same, so the list of actors "in order of appearance" is inaccurate.

On the map of the known world, the Black Sea is correctly called "Pontos Euxeinos," but the Mediterranean is called "Mare Mediterraneum.

" On Roman maps, it was called "Mare Nostrum" (Our Sea) or "Mare Internum" (Inner Sea).

In the fifth century BC, Herodotos called it the "Pontos Boreios" (Northern Sea).

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

In the movie, Alexander sustains a nearly-fatal chest wound during a forest battle against the Indians.

The battle was actually in a walled city in what is now Multan, Pakistan.

The tattoo on Colin Farrell's right arm and shoulder appears in a few shots.

Although Cassander is a main character, and leads the cavalry under Alexander, his actual role in history is much smaller.

He is first recorded in the year that Alexander died, sent by his father to Babylon.

This gave rise to the idea that he came with poison that eventually killed Alexander.

Alexander asks Darius' daughter how she wishes to be treated, she replies, "like a princess," and he grants her wish.

In reality, Alexander asked the question to the Indian king Porus.

When Porus replied "like a king", he won Alexander's respect and became one of his allies.

Cleitus died in Samarkand, not India.

When Alexander and his friends are children, they all look to be the same age.

However, Ptolemy and Nearchus were several years older than Alexander.

When Hermolaus commits suicide, he falls onto his sword.

A shot later, the sword's point is sticking out of his back.

However, the angle of the point and the hilt are impossible.

Nearchus was not recorded as being at Gaugamela, yet he is present.

Antigonus addresses his troops just before the jungle battle against the Indians.

In a flipped shot, his right eye is missing, not his left.

On road marches (as opposed to marching to contact, i.

, when the enemy is in sight or there is imminent contact), the 4 to 7 metre (13 to 21 feet) sarissa would have been broken down into its two components for ease of transport.

In the movie, the sarissa is always shown at full length deployment.

In Gaugamela Battle, we can clearly hear that the Persian army leaders are talking Arabic.

But this battle was before Arabs invasion to Persia so there weren't Arabic words in Persian.

It is implied during the Indian battle that Antigonus has a command over the Shield Bearers, an elite division in the Macedonian army.

This was not so.

Craterus and Polyperchon, shown grieving at Alexander's death and then fighting with the other generals over his corpse, were not even in Babylon when all this occurred.

Nearchus and Antigonus are shown to pursue Pausanias, murderer of Philip and then spear him to death.

This is inaccurate.

In fact, Nearchus, along with Ptolemy, would not have been present at Philip's murder.

When Olympias is telling Alexander that Zeus is his father, she says "I laid with him that night", but her mouth isn't moving.

When Aristotle is describing what he thinks might be a route to circle around to the headwaters of the Nile and travel down it to conquer Egypt, he refers to going "up the Nile," rather than down it.

This may be due to the modern map convention of showing North at the top of maps and referring to traveling in a northerly direction as going "up".

The Nile River flows from South to North and thus traveling down the river is going North.

When the men mutiny at the river Beas, Craterus speaks of 'these elephant monsters' implying that the Macedonians have only heard of them.

This is ridiculous, because not only had they already fought the battle of Hydaspes (depicted in the film as after the mutiny), but they also would have seen the elephants at Gaugamela (Darius had brought a few elephants to the battle, but they saw little action).

The Alexander Mosaic shown when the old Ptolemy was talking did not exist until 100 BC.

It was from the Roman Republic era.

In the Final Cut, when Alexander is giving his speech to his men at Gaugemela.

The officer who hands him his helmet is on his right, but in the next scene he is on his left handing Alexander his helmet.

[Director's Final Cut] At Philip's wedding, when Attalus is toasting a Macedonian Queen to be proud of, he pauses to glare at Alexander but as he does so, his dialog continues without moving his mouth.