When I first covered the topic of Napoleon’s Book of Fate on this blog a few years ago, I innocently, ignorantly assumed that was all there was to it. I was annoyed and embarrassed to discover late last year that what I had presented to you was, in fact, the abbreviated version of it, and that the original was twice as long. So I set to work on the PDF of the full version which you will find further below.
A LITTLE HISTORY
To recap, the story is Napoleon first came across this ‘Book of Fate’ during his invasion of Egypt in 1798. It was reportedly found in an ancient Egyptian tomb by Napoleon’s forces, and presented to Napoleon, who had a Coptic Scholar translate it from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics into the modern German language.