Alexander the Great in the Quran into Arabic. The Greek work "Thesaurus Alexandri" was attributed to Hermes (the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology) and similarly contained supposed letters from Aristotle addressed to Alexander. A more direct Arabic translation of the "Alexander romance," called "Sirat Al-Iskandar", was discovered in Constantinople, at the Hagia Sophia, and is dated to the 13th century. This version includes the letter from Alexander to his mother about his travels in India and at the end of the World. It also includes features which occur exclusively in the Syriac version. The Arabic legend also retains certain pagan elements of the
Altar of the Twelve Gods was a Pentelic marble statue base inscribed on its front: thus identifying the enclosure as that of the Altar of the Twelve Gods. As of 1992, "nearly nine-tenths" of the Altar lay buried beneath the Athens-Piraeus Electric Railway, with only the southwest corner of the enclosure visible. More of the Altar was uncovered by Greek archaeologists in 2011 when the train tracks were temporarily removed for maintenance work. Once the Altar was exposed, archaeologists and a group promoting the revival of ancient Greek polytheism filed legal injunctions to prevent replacement of the tracks of the Athens-Piraeus Railway. The court ruled