Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt

by Nina Burleigh

Having a human encyclopedia at his side added a certain elegance to the brutal endeavor.

In that effort, they founded a new science that would come to be called “archaeology.”

Plato thought pharaonic Egypt was the primordial source of human culture, and that its people existed in a golden age of civilization.

France’s foremost naturalist, Georges Cuvier, declined the invitation, judging—probably correctly—that, professionally, he would benefit more by staying in France.

He was definitely right... Most likely wouldn't know who he is if he went.

They were baffled by, and never wholly understood, the Arabs’ lack of interest in them.

(Edfu is now excavated and is the best-preserved major temple in Egypt.)

In the eighteenth century, the term naturalist indicated a sort of general biologist who would today be classed into a subspecialty such as botany, ornithology, entomology, zoology, even geology—in sum, any of the fields that involve the study of life on our planet.

but his argument that the ostrich’s vestigial wings proved that “nature never advances by rapid leaps” was also rudimentary Darwin.

He said the great pyramids in Egypt were the most impressive works of art he’d ever seen.

Did the scholars play any role in increasing or ameliorating the mistrust between Islam and the West that so plagues the modern world?