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Author Burleigh, Nina.

Title Mirage : Napoleon's scientists and the unveiling of Egypt / Nina Burleigh.

Publication Info. New York : Harper, [2007]
©2007

Copies

Location Call No. Status
 Manchester, Main Library - Non Fiction  962.03 BURLEIGH    Check Shelf
 Middletown, Russell Library - Adult Nonfiction  962.03 BUR    Check Shelf
Edition First edition.
Description xv, 286 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-269) and index.
Summary Two centuries ago, only the most reckless Europeans dared traverse the Middle East. Its history and peoples were the subject of myth and speculation--and no region aroused greater interest than Egypt. It was not until 1798, when an unlikely band of scientific explorers traveled from Paris to the Nile Valley, that Westerners received their first real glimpse of what lay beyond the Mediterranean. Under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte, a small corps of Paris's brightest left the safety of their laboratories, studios, and classrooms to embark into the unknown--some never to see French shores again. Over 150 astronomers, mathematicians, naturalists, physicists, doctors, chemists, engineers, botanists, artists--even a poet and a musicologist--accompanied Napoleon's troops into Egypt. They approached the land not as colonizers, but as experts in their fields of scholarship, meticulously categorizing and collecting their finds, and secured their place in history as the world's earliest-known archaeologists.--From publisher description.
Contents The general -- The geometer and the chemist -- The inventor -- The institute -- The engineers -- The doctors -- The mathematician -- The artist -- The naturalist -- The zoologist -- The stone -- The book -- Epilogue: From Egyptomania to Egyptology.
Subject Egypt -- History -- French occupation, 1798-1801.
Egypt -- Antiquities.
Egyptology -- History -- 18th century.
Second Coalition, War of the, 1798-1801 -- Campaigns -- Egypt.
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821.
French -- Egypt -- History -- 18th century.
ISBN 9780060597672
0060597674
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