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Difference between revisions of "Napoleon's Oraculum"
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==Authorship== | ==Authorship== | ||
According to the Preface, the original manuscript was found by Napoleon and his team during the 1798 expedition into Egypt. According to the story, it was found as a scroll of papyrus that was attached to a mummy found within a sarcophagus, which was itself found inside a royal tomb on Mount Libyeus, near Thebes. Napoleon is said to have had a Copt dictate its contents to his secretary who translated into German. These documents are then said to have been captured at the Battle of Leipsic in 1813 along with various other occult documents that were in his desk. The translation then passes through the hands of a family of patriotic Frenchmen before coming into the possession of Empress Josephine. She was never able to get it to Napoleon during his exile, and so passed it to Herman Kirchenhoffer, so he could translate it to English. | According to the Preface, the original manuscript was found by Napoleon and his team during the 1798 expedition into Egypt. According to the story, it was found as a scroll of papyrus that was attached to a mummy found within a sarcophagus, which was itself found inside a royal tomb on Mount Libyeus, near Thebes. Napoleon is said to have had a Copt dictate its contents to his secretary who translated into German. These documents are then said to have been captured at the Battle of Leipsic in 1813 along with various other occult documents that were in his desk. The translation then passes through the hands of a family of patriotic Frenchmen before coming into the possession of Empress Josephine. She was never able to get it to Napoleon during his exile, and so passed it to Herman Kirchenhoffer, so he could translate it to English. | ||
''Napoleon's Book of Fate: Its Origins and Uses'' by Richard Deacon presents the theory that [[Robert Cross Smith]] and a Dutch man named Bakerstedht who adapted the book from a Dutch translation of the [[I Ching]] instead. | |||
==Usage== | ==Usage== | ||
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==Legitimacy== | ==Legitimacy== | ||
Although there really was a 1798 expedition into Egypt held by the Napoleonic French, the likelihood of such a discovery having taken place is dubious due to numerous factors, including the nature of the answers not being appropriate for the time and place the manuscript is claimed to have come from, the fact that knowledge of the Egyptian hieroglyphs had already been lost, and the way in which the mummy was buried with the scroll, which would have been out of the ordinary. | Although there really was a 1798 expedition into Egypt held by the Napoleonic French, the likelihood of such a discovery having taken place is dubious due to numerous factors, including the nature of the answers not being appropriate for the time and place the manuscript is claimed to have come from, the fact that knowledge of the Egyptian hieroglyphs had already been lost, and the way in which the mummy was buried with the scroll, which would have been out of the ordinary. | ||
==Additional History== | |||
According to Deacon, the book was investigated in the 1830s and 1840s by various European intelligence agencies. The Austrian government is mentioned specifically, who apparently had their Military Intelligence branch check it for code. The British Naval Intelligence Division allegedly had an interest in the book as well, but instead concluded that it was something that was made with the intent of being disruptive to Napoleon's rule. | |||
[[Category:Geomancy]] | [[Category:Geomancy]] | ||
[[Category:Books]] | [[Category:Books]] | ||
[[Category:Occult Books]] | [[Category:Occult Books]] | ||