Cleopatra: separating fact from fiction

And the one thing you think is true, but isn’t Back in the thirties, Cecil B. de Mille offered the role of Cleopatra to Claudette Colbert with the words, ‘How would you like to play the wickedest woman in history?’ Was she really history’s wickedest woman, reclining on an antique sunbed, being fed grapes by Nubian slaves and […]

Napoleon and the Rosetta Stone

Finding the Rosetta Stone During the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt in 1799, French soldiers were strengthening the defences of a fort at Rosetta, now Rashid, in the Nile Delta. They uncovered an unusual stone with strange markings that had been used as part of the fortifications. Their officer, Pierre-François Bouchard, ordered the men to stop work. He sent the stone to Alexandria for further examination. Napoleon had brought a council […]