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Nectanebus in Macedonia

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Olympia's horoscope and the son of Ammon the Egypian god

Olympia and Ammon It is always in the Pseudo-Callistenes book that we find the horoscope that Nectanebus casted for Olympia. By then he was a fixed component of her court. For what is reported, when the magician had to predict someone’s future he used a special golden, silver and acacia-wood plane table on which three belts were marked. On the outer belt stood Zeus circled by his 36 decans; on the second there were the 12 Zodiac signs; on the third the Sun and the Moon. For casting the horoscope Nectanebus used to set the plane-table on a tripod, then he extracted from a little box the models of the seven stars (Sun, Moon, Zeus, Kronos, Aphrodites, Hermes and probably also Ares): When this was done he went on inserting in the central belt 8 gems and placed them where he supposed the planets would have been at the moment of the person’s birth. Then from the disposition of what he saw he interpreted it. That was what he had already done for Olympia and it was with the same enchantment that he succeeded to interpret what the gods had fixed for Alexander’s future mother. It was always through this spell that he learned how much important was for him to stay near Olympia and to involve himself in the birth of the son she was expecting. Thus near her he was from the conception of her baby through all the labor.
Nectanebus in Olympia saw a mean to save Egypt. She had in herself the mean to give birth to an exceptional man, a hero who if ever he could have been conceived in the right way, could bring back Egypt to its ancient splendors. But to arrange things in such a way, the child must become king of Egypt, and as all the kings of Egypt had to be sons of Ammon, also he had to be conceived by him. Thus, instead that by Philip, Olympia had to be fecundated by Ammon and Nectanebus, acting as the paranymph, would arrange that this supernatural intercourse would take place while she was asleep. Once he had decided how to do it, the magician went to the desert where he collected some special herbs and brought them in his laboratory. Here he pressed them and extracted their juice. Then, just like the Theban priests when they modelled the image of Apep, using the magic wax he molded a figurine of Olympia and on it he wrote the queen name. After this, lighting a lamp, he poured over the statuette the herb’s juice and exorcized the demons so that they forced the queen to dream the famous vision in which she saw Ammon coming to her. Ammon laid with her and possessed the queen. Then before disappearing Ammon told Olympia that she would bore a child, a boy who would avenge her on Philip, her husband, a very active man, who apart of all his activities, was always finding the time to betray her with any woman he met, a thing that Olympia never succeeded in swallowing.
Having so done Nectanebus had to find a way to inform Philip of the news. After all when someone arrange that a woman get fecundated by some one that, also if a god, is not her husband, one must tell it to her spouse and legal responsible. Thus Nectanebus sent also to Philip a dream. At an order of the magician, a magic hawk started from Macedony and the same night arrived at the place where Philip was resting. Here the holy bird instilled in Philip’s mind what he must know. And Philip dreamed. It was a strange vision, not very clear and at first he didn’t understand what it was saying. Thus he called an expert of onyromancy and told him to explain its meaning and then he understood all. Now he was sure that the boy that Olympia would bore would be the Lybian Ammon’s son and not his. We don’t know if he liked the idea. Anyway he had never liked Olympia.

E.A. WALLIS BUDGE, Egyptian Magi, Bury St.Edmunds, Suffolk, 1975, first published in 1899 pp. 90-95