Napoleon's Oraculum

Napoleon's Oraculum, or, the Book of Fate: Found in Napoleon's Cabinet of Curiosities after his defeat at Battle of Leipzig. Originally this Oraculum had been discovered in one of the Royal tombs of Egypt during a French military expedition of 1801. Translated by a famous German or Italian scholar and antiquarian. The story goes like this: Napoleon showed the Oraculum to Sonnini, or Charles-Nicolas-Sigisbert Sonnini de Manoncourt. Sonnini took the effort to translate it, but he wasn't successful. He was an expert in reptiles and apostles, but not in hieroglyphs. Thus Sonnini called an unknown man who spoke Coptic, and this Coptic speaker after much effort finally succeeded. In order to preserve the secrecy of the Oraculum, the translation was written down in German. One of Napoleon's most treasured possessions. He consulted it on many occasions and it is said to have formed a stimulus to his most speculative and most successful enterprises. (Don't believe everything you read. Napoleon never consulted the Oraculum. The decipherment of the hieroglyphic script happened only after his death. This Oraculum is a product of the 19th century imagination.) See also 𓁹, 𓅲, 𓋜 .