Napoleon's Pyramids by William Dietrich

himself with a Corsican’s instinct the next. No one knew what he believed, least of all he, but Bonaparte was a firm proponent of the usefulness of religion in regulating the masses. “If I could found my own religion I could rule Asia,” he told us.
    “I think Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad got there before you,” Berthollet said dryly.
    “This is my point,” Bonaparte said. “Jews, Christians, and Muslims all trace their origins to the same holy stories. They all worship the same monotheistic god. Except for a few trifling details as to which prophet had the last word, they are more alike than different. If we make plain to the Egyptians that the Revolution recognizes the unity of faith, we should have no problem with religion. Both Alexander and the Romans had policies of tolerating the beliefs of the conquered.”
    “It’s the believers who are most alike who fight most fervently over differences,” Conte warned. “Don’t forget the wars between Catholics and Protestants.”
    “Yet are we not at the dawn of reason, of the new scientific age?” Fourier spoke up. “Perhaps mankind is on the verge of being rational.”
    “No subject people are rational at the point of a gun,” the balloonist replied.
    “Alexander subdued Egypt by declaring himself a son of both Zeus the Greek and Amon the Egyptian,” Napoleon said. “I intend to be as tolerant of Muhammad as of Jesus.”
    “While you cross yourself like the pope,” Monge chided. “And what of the atheism of the Revolution?”
    “A stance doomed to fail, its biggest mistake. It is immaterial whether or not God exists. It simply is that whenever you bring religion, or even superstition, into conflict with liberty, the former will always win over the latter in the people’s mind.” This was the kind of cynically perceptive political judgment Bonaparte enjoyed making to hold his intellectual weight against the learning of the scientists. He enjoyed provoking us. “Besides, religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”
    Napoleon was also fascinated in the truths behind myth.
    “Resurrection and virgin birth, for example,” he told us one night as the rationalist Berthollet rolled his eyes. “This is a story not just of Christianity, but of countless ancient faiths. Like your Masonic Hiram Abiff, right, Talma?” He liked to focus on my friend in hopes the writer would flatter him in newspaper articles he sent back to France.
    “It is so common a legend that one wonders if it was not frequently true,” Talma agreed. “Is death an absolute end? Or can it be reversed, or postponed indefinitely? Why did the pharaohs devote so much attention to it?”
    “Certainly the earliest stories of resurrection go back to the legend of the Egyptian god Osiris and his sister and wife Isis,” said de Venture, our scholar of the East. “Osiris was slain by his evil brother Seth, but Isis reassembled his dismembered parts to bring him back to life. Then he slept with his sister and sired her son, Horus. Death was but a prelude to birth.”
    “And now we go to the land where this was supposedly done,” Bonaparte said. “Where did these stories come from, if not some grain of truth? And if they are somehow true, what powers did the Egyptians have to accomplish such feats? Imagine the advantages of immortality, of inexhaustible time! How much you could accomplish!”
    “Or at least benefit from compounding interest,” Monge joked.
    I stirred. Is this why we were really invading Egypt—not just because it could become a colony but because it was a source of everlasting life? Is this why so many were curious about my medallion?
    “It’s all myth and allegory,” Berthollet scoffed. “What people doesn’t fear death, and dream of surmounting it? And yet they are all, including the Egyptians, dead.”
    General Desaix peeked from his slumbers. “Christians believe in a different kind of everlasting life,” he pointed out mildly.
    “But while