Napoleon in Egypt

Napoleon in Egypt

By Paul Strathern
(Bantam, 480 pages, $30)

Dewey call number: 962.03S


In the summer of 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte hatched a plan of conquest worthy of his idol, Alexander the Great. Then a brash, 27-year-old general in the French Revolutionary army, Napoleon dreamed of leading a full-scale invasion of Egypt and the Middle East before marching on to the ultimate prize: British India. It would be a campaign of choice rather than necessity that would – if successful – make him the ruler of a vast Oriental empire and, possibly, of France itself.

His superiors decided to let him go: out of the way, far away, he might die, and they'd be done with him. He thought Alexandrians would welcome him with open arms (an American Vice President would suffer the same illusion about Iraq 206 years later - except that the VP would not be leading armies, simply rooting them on from far, far away).

In "Napoleon in Egypt," Paul Strathern has written both a gripping adventure story and a sobering morality tale. The cocksure French came to Egypt as conquerors, offering the gift of civilization to a backward and oppressed people. Their ultimate downfall serves to highlight the perils as well as the potential benefits of such an undertaking.

Napoleon would eventually defeat Mameluke armies, including Murad Bey's at the Battle of the Pyramids, and settle down to rule. He would be called Sultan El-Kebir, Great Ruler.

The engineers, artists, cartographers, physicists and zoologists Napoleon brought with him conducted much-celebrated scientific and archaeological discoveries would help to redeem the expedition in the eyes of posterity. Although ancient Egypt was not entirely unknown to Europeans at the end of the 18th century, it was still an obscure subject. One of the future keys to unlocking its mysteries was a black basalt slab covered with inscriptions unearthed in 1799 during the construction of a French fort: the famed Rosetta Stone, from which ancient hieroglyphics would eventually be deciphered. There would turn out to be little time for any lasting reforms of Egyptian society, but the results of the expedition's knowledge-gathering efforts – compiled in the multivolume "Description de l'Égypte" (1809-26) – played a major role in Europe's understanding of distant cultures.

Eventually Napoleon's forces would be defeated, first losing its naval power in Aboukir Bay to English naval forces led by Nelson; and later as he tried advancing into Syria without naval support.

To ingratiate himself with the Egyptians, Napoleon had brought with him a copy of the Koran (cataloged in his library under "Politics"), which he claimed to read from every night.

Curious cataloguing, though understandable in context.