So Napoleon brought with him not just soldiers but some hundred and sixty so-called savants-scientists, scholars, and artists, with their compasses and rulers and pencils and pens-to describe what they could of this fabled old realm. “In the villages,” Napoleon said, “they don’t even have any idea what scissors are.” Still, from its astonishing ancient monuments-pyramids and obelisks piercing the clouds-and its strange, beautiful picture-language, called hieroglyphics, which everyone admired and no one could read, people knew that this had once been a formidable civilization. By the nineteenth century, Egypt was no longer the glamorous prize it had been for Alexander. But he was also interested in Egypt itself, which his idol Alexander the Great had conquered in 332 B.C.

He had a practical purpose: he wanted to kick the English out of the eastern Mediterranean and block their lucrative trade with India. In 1798, Napoleon, with some four hundred ships, set sail across the Mediterranean, bound for Egypt.

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