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By Tim Neagle

Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt
By Nina Burleigh
Paperback, $14.99

You may recall from your world history class in high school that Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, a move that ended in military disaster. Along with his army, Napoleon took more than 150 of France’s leading scientists, engineers and intellectuals with him, in order to bring a better understanding of the ancient land of Egypt to Europeans. Mirage by Nina Burleigh tells their story, and does so wonderfully.

In this age of globalization, there is virtually no corner of the Earth that is not accessible, so it is something of a shock to learn that Egypt and the entire Middle East remained a hugely mysterious region for Europeans in Napoleon’s time. The intellectuals, known as the savants, were intended to shed light on the ancient land of Egypt.

So ignorant were Europeans of Egypt that many of the savants, when the French fleet anchored off Alexandria, expected to see the famed library of antiquity, not realizing it had been thoroughly destroyed many centuries before. In fact, the French were deeply shocked by the impoverished, primitive city of Alexandria, which they assumed would still be at the peak of glory it occupied in ancient times.

“We were looking for the city of the Ptolemies, the library, the seat of human knowledge,” wrote architect Charles Norry. “And we found instead ruins, barbarism, poverty and degradation.”
Physical conditions were extremely harsh: the lack of water and blistering desert sun stunned the French as did the clouds of mosquitoes and flies, not to mention the terrifying sandstorms. Many of the Frenchmen soon found themselves victims of opthalmia, one of the many diseases that would plague them during their time in Egypt.

But in spite of all that, the savants swiftly buckled down to work. Within days of their arrival, they were swarming over Alexandria’s obelisks and ruins. They were puzzled and fascinated by the hieroglyphics that covered many of the ancient ruins. In the nearby town of Rosetta, they would eventually solve the mystery with their find of the famous Rosetta Stone, which was covered with an ancient proclamation written in both Greek and hieroglyphics. Translating the stone, the savants were able to read hieroglyphics, bringing a dead language to life.

Napoleon’s expedition quickly became a disaster when the French fleet, which still contained most of the army’s supplies and virtually all the scientific tools of the savants, was sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean by the British navy in the Battle of the Nile. Napoleon’s army was trapped in Egypt with no means of escape, and, of course, so were the savants.

The story of how they continued their mission makes Mirage a highly entertaining read. Improvisation and determination kept the savants going. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone remains the highlight of the savants’ time in Egypt, but they did much else besides. The magnificent multi-volume book they completed about Egypt upon their return to France some years later opened European eyes to the wonders of Egypt.

And there was much to amaze and astonish the savants. The naturalists among them happily spent many months collecting samples of the unique wildlife of Egypt, featuring many animal species that were mostly unknown to Europeans. Other Frenchmen spread out to undertake an ambitious mapping of the entire country; these expeditions always required a military escort, for from first to last, the French were faced with overwhelming hostility from the native Arabs.

The savants prided themselves on having better relations with the Arabs than did the French army, but when a ferocious rebellion swept Cairo, the savants were forced to fight for their survival, just like the other Frenchmen. Napoleon’s army crushed the uprising, but Egyptian hostility to the invaders continued largely unabated.

The French were shocked by what they considered the Egyptians’ primitive way of life, but to the modern reader, the French often don’t seem that advanced either. Consider their response to the outbreaks of bubonic plague that tormented the French throughout their time in the Middle East.

The preferred treatment of the disease by the French doctors was pouring vinegar over everything, in the hope that it would somehow halt the spread of the disease. It was a forlorn hope, and plague claimed thousands of French lives.

The great monuments of antiquity soon came to dominate the attention of the savants. They found the great pyramids and giant statuary had been neglected for centuries: the Sphinx was virtually covered in sand when the French arrived, with only its massive head showing. The savants braved the bats and darkness to make the first tentative explorations of the great tombs of the pharaohs, all of which had been stripped by grave robbers many centuries before (the intact tomb of Tutankhamen, which escaped the depredations of the robbers, was not found until the 20th century.)

The savants would remain in Egypt for three years, far longer than Napoleon himself. Thwarted of his dreams of conquest by the British and the Ottoman Turks, Bonaparte abandoned his troops and scientists and slipped out of Egypt and back to Paris, where he staged a coup and became ruler of France. The French army would eventually surrender to the British. As a prize of war, the British filched the Rosetta Stone from the French, and it can be seen to this day in the British Museum in London.

The English also wanted to seize the copious notes and collected specimens of the savants, but after much argument, the Frenchmen were allowed to take their scientific treasures back to France. There they worked on their great book, The Description of Egypt, which was not completed until 1828. It remains an imperishable landmark to the courageous men who carried the cause of science into a world unknown to them. Napoleon may have failed in Egypt, but the savants carried out their mission to its triumphant conclusion. Mirage rescues their story from obscurity and is a fine testament to their accomplishments.