He was a conqueror who never lost a battle and built an empire that spanned the known world. This alone made him godlike to them.
This is an example of people projecting current Western attitudes onto people of past times and other cultures. It may come as a shock, but people don't always view the world the same way. Their fundamental view of things can be radically different. For example: modern archaeology supports the idea that the Jews of ancient times did not, in fact, invade the land of Canaan and conquer it from previous inhabitants (having been promised it by God), but rather, had always been there. So if they had always been there, why did the writers of the Bible invent a story of their having come into the land from outside and taken it away from its previous inhabitants? The answer is simple, but counterintuitive to a person steeped in today's culture: to those people, the people of ancient times, taking a land by strength gave one a better claim on it than did long possession. These days we think the opposite. Many people today look upon people of European descent in the Americas as people who stole the land from its rightful possessors, even hundreds of years later. Taking land in that way is theft. An injustice. That's a modern attitude. In ancient times, strength, fighting prowess, toughness, counted for more in people's consciousness. So to the people of that time, being conquerors who stole land from the previous inhabitants meant more, was more impressive, and lent more weight than simply having been there all along. The account of the Israelites given in the Bible was meant to impress readers with the Israelites' greatness, their status as a special, chosen people, and it was more noteworthy to have taken something by the strength of one's hands than it was simply to have received it as an inheritance.
So it makes perfect sense that a different culture, and a primitive one to boot, would still look at Alexander as a god. He achieved things which, right down to this day, are unequaled when judged from the view of prowess. That we, today, might view him as an aggressor and perhaps even a war criminal does not mean that people of past eras would.
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