Mirage

In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte led an invading army into Egypt, and with it traveled more than 150 French engineers, artists, physicians, and scientists, including a poet and a musicologist. Only the most daring or unusual Europeans had ever ventured across the then-unmapped lands of what is now the Middle East, so the journey broke new ground in more ways than one.

These scholars, known as savants, endured hunger, harsh conditions, uncertainty, and disease while pursuing their discoveries, often at great personal risk. The expedition was the first large-scale encounter between Europeans and Muslims in the modern era. It yielded remarkable finds of major historical and scientific importance, among them the ruins of the colossal pyramids and the Rosetta Stone, yet it also claimed countless lives through plague, deprivation, madness, and violence.

Journalist Nina Burleigh, whose work has been widely acclaimed, returns to this turning point and shows how the venture ultimately exposed the hidden history of ancient Egypt to an eager Europe.