‘I prefer to think of my view as American, Sir Sidney. Put off by the whole thing.’
‘Well. Quite, quite. Yet you can’t capitulate to indecision in desperate times, can you? Have to believe in something, eh?’
‘Bonaparte is talking about marching on Syria.’
‘I knew it! The bastard won’t rest until he’s occupied the sultan’s palace in Constantinople! Syria, eh? Then we’d best set course for there and give warning. There’s a pasha there, what’s his name?’ He turned to the captain.
‘Djezzar,’ Lawrence replied. ‘The name means ‘butcher’. Bosnian by birth, rose from slavery, supposed to be unusually cruel even in a region known for its cruelty. Nastiest bastard in five hundred miles.’
‘Just the man we need to face off against the French!’ Smith cried.
‘I’ve no more business with Napoleon,’ I interrupted. ‘I simply need to learn if a woman I was with in Egypt survived a terrible fall, and reunite with her if she did. After that, I was hoping to arrange passage to New York.’
‘Perfectly understandable! You’ve done your bit! And yet a man of your pluck and diplomatic acumen would be invaluable in warning the wogs about this damned Bonaparte, wouldn’t you? I mean, you’ve seen his tyranny firsthand. Come on, Gage, don’t you want to see the Levant? Scarcely a stone’s throw from Cairo! That’s the place to learn about this woman of yours! We can send word through our damned oily spies.’
‘Perhaps an enquiry through Alexandria…’
‘Go ashore there and you’ll be shot on sight! Or worse, hanged as a spy and a balloon thief! Ah, the French will be sharpening their guillotine for you! No, no, that option is foreclosed. I know you’re something of a lone wolf, but let the king’s navy here give you some help for a change. If the woman is alive, we can get word through Palestine, and organise a raid with a chance to really get her back. I admire your courage, but now’s the time to use a cool head, man.’
He had a point. I suppose I’d burnt my bridges with Napoleon, and charging back into Egypt alone might be more suicidal than brave. My balloon ride had left Astiza at least a hundred miles to the south, in Cairo. Maybe I could play along with Sir Sidney until I learnt what had happened. Once ashore in a nearby port like El Arish or Gaza, I’d pawn the cherubim in my crotch for money. Then a card game, a new rifle…
Smith was going on. ‘Acre, Haifa, Jaffa – historic cities all. Saracens, Crusaders, Romans, Jews – say, I know just the place you could give us a hand!’
‘A hand?’ I wanted their help, not the other way around.
‘Someone with your skills could slip in and have a look about while making enquiries about this woman. Perfect place, for your purposes and mine.’
‘Purposes?’
He nodded, plans building in his head like a thundercloud, his grin wide as a cannon’s mouth. He grasped my arms as if I’d dropped from the sky to answer all his prayers.
‘Jerusalem!’ he cried.
And as I contemplated the will of the gods and the luck of cards, the bow of our ship began to turn.
HISTORICAL NOTE
Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 invasion of Egypt was not just one of the great military adventures of all time, it was a turning point in French, Egyptian, and archaeological history. For Bonaparte, Egypt would prove to be both defeat and springboard, giving him the desperation and fame to seize absolute power in France. For Egypt, the French invasion was the beginning of the modern era after centuries of Ottoman and Mameluke domination. It not only opened the door to Western technology and trade, but also began a turbulent era of colonialism, independence, modernisation, and cultural tension still playing out today. For archaeology, Napoleon’s inclusion of 167 savants in his invading force was a watershed. Early in 1799, French soldiers discovered a stone at Rosetta with Greek, Demotic, and ancient writing that would prove the key to deciphering hieroglyphics. That, coupled with publication of the savant’s monumental Description de l’Egype, in 23 volumes between 1809 and 1828, gave birth to the science of Egyptology. It started the Romantic era’s enchantment with Egyptian fashion and ignited a global fascination with ancient Egypt that continues to this day. Almost everything we know about ancient Egypt has been learnt since Napoleon’s invasion.
The idea that the Great Pyramid of Giza functioned as something other than a simple tomb, and that its pharaoh may be buried elsewhere, dates as far back as the ancient Greek historians Herodotus and Diodorus. The puzzle increased when ninth-century Arab grave robbers found no mummy, no treasure, and no inscriptions when they broke into the tomb. In the last two centuries there has been unending fascination with, and debate about, the pyramid’s dimensions, mysteries, and mathematical meaning. While some of the most speculative theorists accuse mainstream Egyptologists of being close-minded, and while some academics have labelled the zaniest of the crackpots as ‘pyramidiots’, there is serious scholarly debate about the pyramid’s structure and purpose. New mysteries are still being discovered by robotic explorers, and hidden chambers are still suspected. The Giza pyramids rest on a limestone plateau that could contain caves, and Herodotus reported an underground lake or river beneath the structure.
The Great Pyramid’s precise geographic placement, its mysterious relationship to the size of our planet, its relationship to pi, and the fascinating correlations between the dimensions of its chambers and intriguing mathematical concepts are all true. The Fibonacci Sequence is a real phenomena, seen in nature in spiral patterns as Jomard describes, and the pyramid’s embodiment of the golden section, or golden number, is also true. Pascal’s triangle is a real mathematical concept and it yields many more number games than are mentioned in this novel. It does produce a value close to that of the Egyptian value for pi, though I won’t promise the pattern really leads to a secret door. I’ve taken the liberty of allowing my French savants to guess more about pyramid mathematics than was immediately apparent during Napoleon’s invasion. While Jomard really did publish intriguing theories, some of the concepts in this novel came from later scholars after more precise measurements could be made. A fascinating and controversial introduction to these concepts and an exhaustive analysis of pyramid mathematics can be found in the 1971 book Secrets of the Great Pyramid by Peter Tompkins and Livio Catullo Stecchini.
This novel closely follows the early history of Bonaparte’s military invasion of Egypt. Most of the characters are real people, including ten-year-old Giocante Casabianca, whose death at the Battle of the Nile inspired the famed nineteenth Century poem, ‘The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck.’ One historical liberty is that I place Desaix’s presence at the temple of Dendara three months earlier than the general actually arrived there. The army paused in late January 1799, and the weary artist Vivant Denon was so entranced by the temple’s glories that he wrote, ‘What I saw today has paid me back for all my misery.’ A few days later, when the French division first saw the ruins of Karnak and Luxor, the troops spontaneously came to a halt, applauded, and presented arms.
Many historical details used in this novel, including the presence of Conte’s balloons, are true. There is scholarly disagreement about whether Napoleon actually entered the Great Pyramid, and what happened to him if he did, but the author has lain in the granite sarcophagus as Bonaparte may have, and found it a remarkable experience.
This story weaves together military and political history, Masonic lore, biblical scholarship, mystic speculation, and information about ancient Egypt. For a general history of the invasion I recommend J. Christopher Herold’s 1962 prizewinning book Bonaparte in Egypt. Fascinating eyewitness accounts of the expedition include those by the artist Vivant Denon, French captain Joseph Marie Mouret, and the Egyptian Al-Jabarti. Some of the quotes attributed to Napoleon in this novel are taken from real life, though not all were spoken during the Egyptian campaign. His own words reveal a man of fascinating complexity.