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
Greek sea gods gods in the "Iliad", while in the seventh century BC the Spartan poet Alcman made the sea-nymph Thetis a demiurge-figure. Orpheus's song in Book I of the "Argonautica" hymns the sea-nymph Eurynome as first queen of the gods, as wife of the ocean-born giant Ophion. The pre-Socratic cosmogony of Thales, who made water the first element, may be seen as a natural outgrowth of this poetic thinking. The primacy of aquatic gods is reminiscent of, and may even have been influenced by, ancient Near Eastern mythology - where Tiamat (salt water) and Apsu (fresh water) are the first gods of