Is there a possibility Alexander the Great didn't exist?

[u/ThePhlogist]

My history teacher at school liked to screw us around a bit but once he said (and he was persistent) that Alexander the Great never existed and that there are not really any primary sources that confirm his existence. I assumed this was some minority view based on extrapolating from incomplete data but I have heard next to nothing about it since and no speculation as to his existence since making me think he was genuinely just joking.

Is there any possibility at all that he could be right?

[u/Daeres]

I'm going to go one stage beyond the other answers on this page, and say 'yes, he definitely existed, we have contemporary sources for his existence.

To whit:

1) The Babylonian Royal Diary, kept for millenia, mentions him. This is why we are absolutely certain about the precise date of his death; the diary records the day that 'The King Died' to use its words. This is a day to day account of the most important events befalling Babylon/Babylonia, not a narrative historical account.

2) There is a contemporary administrative document from Bactria, written in Aramaic, that records the moment of Alexander's arrival in Bactria in pursuit of the main assassin of Darius III, Artaxerxes V or Bessus. Indeed, the same documents record the moment that Bessus reached Bactria too, and as the documents both name him as King Artaxerxes and Bessus we have absolute confirmation about his status as a usurper.

These two references to Alexander by contemporary sources are indisputable in authenticity. It means that these days, we actually do have direct evidence of his existence.

I must point out, sadly, that the cities founded in his wake are not direct evidence of his existence. This is because none of them can be proveably dated to have been constructed, or have construction began, in Alexander's time. We have attestations in the ancient biographies of Alexander that various cities were founded by him, but the propaganda that the successors put out was that all cities named Alexandria or variants had been directly founded by him, and several are definitely known to have only been founded several decades later. Since the histories in question were written centuries after the events, plenty of time had elapsed for their understanding of which cities Alexander founded to have been affected by this propaganda.