Napoleon in Egypt, Part 2

Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign was a military disaster,* but the Army of the Orient wasn’t the only army that Napoleon brought with him to Egypt. A commission of some 160 savants–scientists, artists, engineers, and scholars–accompanied the invading army, bringing with them virtually every book on Egypt available, dozens of crates of scientific instruments and a printing…

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And Speaking of Napoleon in Egypt…

While writing my last blog post I was stunned to realize that I’ve never written about Napoleon’s invasion of Europe here on the Margins.  I’ve hinted around the edges of the subject in posts on the Rosetta Stone and Tipu Sultan.  But I’ve never written about the invasion itself.  Which is kind of amazing given…

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The Nile

In The Nile:A Journey Downriver Through Egypt’s Past and Present, popular Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson leads the reader on a historical travelogue that moves from Aswan, home of the river’s First Cataract, to Cairo’s Gezira Island, from Paleolithic rock drawings to the Arab Spring. The voyage that shapes The Nile is not simply metaphorical. Wilkinson floats…

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