to using the epithet the "Two Horned." A passage from the Ethiopic Christian legend describes the Angel of the Lord calling Alexander by this name: Then God, may He be blessed and exalted! put it into the heart of the Angel to call Alexander 'Two-horned,' ... And Alexander said unto him, ' Thou didst call me by the name Two-horned, but my name is Alexander ... and I thought that thou hadst cursed me by calling me by this name.' The angel spake unto him, saying, 'O man, I did not curse thee by the name by which thou and the works that thou doest are known. Thou hast come unto me, and I praise thee because, from the east to the west, the whole earth hath been given unto thee ...' References to Alexander's supposed horns are found in literature ranging many different languages, regions and centuries: The horns of Alexander ... have had a varied symbolism. They represent him as a god, as a son of a god, as a prophet and propagandist of the Most High, as something approaching the role of a messiah, and also as the champion of Allah. They represent him as a world conqueror, who subjugated the two horns or ends of the world, the lands of the rising and of the setting sun ... For these reasons, among others, the Quran's Arabic epithet "Dhul-Qarnayn," literally meaning "the two-horned one," is interpreted as a reference to Alexander the Great. Alexander's Wall Early accounts of Alexander's Wall The building of gates in the Caucasus Mountains by Alexander to repel the barbarian peoples identified with Gog and Magog has ancient provenance and the wall is known as the Gates of Alexander or the Caspian Gates. The name Caspian Gates originally applied to the narrow region at the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea, through which Alexander actually marched in the pursuit of Bessus in 329 BC, although he did not stop to fortify it. It was transferred to the passes through the Caucasus, on the other side of the Caspian, by the more fanciful historians of Alexander. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37–100 AD) mentions that: ...a nation of the Alans, whom we have previously mentioned elsewhere as being Scythians ... travelled through a passage which King Alexander [the Great] shut up with iron gates. Josephus also records that the people of Magog, the Magogites,