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The towering mountains of the Hindu Kush overlook the Bamiyan valley of Afghanistan, where Taliban soldiers recently reduced most of the famed Buddhas of Bamiyan to rubble (see John C. Huntington, “The Buddhas of Bamiyan”). Alexander’s troops faced punishing weather and terrain as they made their way through narrow mountain passes. (Alexander’s tutor, Aristotle, had conjectured that the ends of the earth should be visible from the peaks of the Hindu Kush.) Alexander moved on, conquering Bactria and sweeping into the Punjab, finally reaching the Indian Ocean near the modern city of Karachi, Pakistan. The Greek conqueror then returned westward through Persia and Mesopotamia, where he died suddenly in Babylon in 323 B.C.