Chapter 1170: The Spirit of Louvre (7)

Death is a state of the soul, it's just a change of residence, why be so sad. My father called me into the arms of another life, and one day I will call you, and you call your children, and the years go by...

— Carlo Bonaparte

The Egyptians called their land Kemet, which means black land. All the land irrigated by the Nile River has this color, which is different from the red soil that has not been irrigated by the river. The pharaohs believed that the source of the Nile originated in a cave between the granite rocks below the Elephant Island in the subterranean world where it flowed.

Kemet has been described in many ways as a paradise, where rivers fertilize the soil and lush swamps and grasslands provide food and habitat for domestic and wild animals.

There are a large number of waterfowl on the river bank, fish are everywhere in the river, and there are solemn and solemn temples on the river bank.

Even if there are no priests piously singing sacrificial rites to pray for the blessings of the gods at this moment, the temple has become dilapidated due to years of disrepair and destruction by tomb robbers. The dilapidation of the temple feels a sense of vicissitudes of history, like a ride through the ruins.

In the 1870s, because of the "Egyptian Traveler's Handbook" written by Wilkinson, even Europeans who did not know much about Egypt could still visit Egypt according to this travel guide. Egypt has become a winter holiday destination for many rich and not-so-wealthy Europeans. There are regular airboat services between Italy and Alexandria.

The upsurge of tourism has made European society more widely exposed to "Oriental civilization".

Mark Twain once wrote about the lush scenery of Egypt in his "A Fool Going Abroad": The endless plains are full of greenery and luxuriant grains, which is really pleasing to the eye.

These "green" places are places where rivers flow, palm trees and mirage-like colonnades. The places without river water are still covered with yellow sand, and together with those Sphinxes and pyramids, the combination of these scenery, in the era when there were only black and white photos, was very visually attractive for people to visit this place.

Most wealthy tourists come to Egypt to relax and, like in "Death on the Nile," everyone is laid-back. People focus on Cleopatra's affairs with Caesar and Antony, and the ancient gods more than London's intrigue.

People dance on the boat, enjoy the scenery, and occasionally go to the scenic spots on the shore to comment on the old things thousands of years ago.

It's easier to meddle in other people's affairs than in your own. Generally speaking, wherever they go, tourists will always buy some souvenirs to return home. The antique trading markets in Thebes and Luxor are almost open and legal. Counterfeiters have made many statuettes, steles and scarabs. Even Even the most experienced Egyptologists can be fooled. Most less affluent travelers just want that exotic piece in their home, and it really doesn't matter if it's real or not.

Authentic works tended to be reserved for more respectable collectors, usually museum agents, for whom Coptic manuscripts were particularly popular, and every European museum wanted major finds and complete papyri.

The other is the "big man", whether he is important because of his money or because of his hereditary title, only they can afford such an outrageously high price.

It is precisely because of the sky-high prices of these cultural relics that many adventurers and "freelancers" have the mentality of getting rich overnight, frantically excavating large-scale cultural relics, burning, throwing away, and destroying cultural relics that they think may be worthless.

This forced some Egyptologists to leave Egypt, on the one hand because tourism and those adventurers made Egypt's oriental characteristics less pure, and on the other hand because of the high cost of living.

As we all know, the price of tourist attractions is high, and the locals will not go, but these did not matter to Muhammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt at the time.

Tagore said that when a person's patience reaches the limit and he can't bear it, it is the time when he awakens.

Muhammad Ali wanted to modernize Egypt, to make ancient Egypt as advanced as Europe.

He demolished the temple and used those stones to build factories to provide local Egyptians with a real economy other than tourism. Anyway, these stones will be kept and shipped to Europe.

Scamander retrieved the Thunderbird from Egypt because Egyptian wizards planned to use it to attract rain and irrigate more land.

"Orientals" have always paid little attention to the International Law of Secrecy. Their wizards are different from those in the West. Not only do they not have to worry about being hunted down, but they also enjoy a very high status.

If a wizard has no real skills, he will be beaten or even killed instead. It is two concepts from the West that if he is a real wizard, he must be burned at the stake.

Napoleon once said that he seldom drew his sword, that he won with his eyes, not with his arms.

Although Napoleon defeated the Egyptian Mamluk cavalry, the French navy was attacked by the British fleet. In the end, only two of the 400 warships remained, which led to political turmoil in France. Napoleon felt that his opportunity had come, and he returned to France alone, using his authority to launch a coup, and established the First French Republic.

Egypt is a long and narrow country because it is related to the direction of the Nile River. As a result, Napoleon's front was stretched very long, which is a big taboo in using troops. There were similar reasons for his failure in his expedition to Russia.

The British burned the French fleet and indirectly helped Napoleon, otherwise the victorious general would have experienced a different defeat in Egypt.

Courage is the source of military strength, and the short Corsican also has this characteristic, which is different from the "gentleman who can go to the palace hall" expected to be cultivated by the military academy built by Louis XV.

Napoleon's military academy was full of sons of marquises with prominent families.

Napoleon was studying on a scholarship, and these wealthy young men bullied him a lot. They regarded Napoleon as a bumpkin from the countryside, and nicknamed him "the straw stuck in the nose" with the French homonym of his name, which means "Shouldn't be so lucky".

The situation is not good for the minor aristocrats who enjoy the king's scholarship like him. They value their family background more than the boarders of wealthy families.

The worse it is, the more you have to compare family origins and geographical differences, and Le Picar de Filippo is one of them.

His father was a military officer from Poitiers. Like Napoleon, he received a scholarship and was also an artilleryman. He entered the Paris Military Academy three years earlier than Napoleon. He was a fanatical defender of the monarchy, he was always looking for trouble with Napoleon, and young people were always bound to have conflicts, both verbal and physical. Filippo sometimes laughed at Napoleon's accent like the sons of the Marquis, and sometimes said Napoleon. A man who became an aristocrat only by virtue of the French invasion of Corsica.

The two often fought, and Napoleon's support for Rousseau's ideas and the ancient republic were also related to this old man.

After the outbreak of the Great Revolution, Filippo joined the royalists and fled overseas, serving the prince and the prince of Condé successively.

There is a Chinese saying that the road to the enemy is narrow, the earth is so big, and the two of them still met on the battlefield after graduation. A few years later, Philippo can be said to have single-handedly blocked Napoleon's eastward advance in Saint-Jean-Dacre. .

From a certain point of view, the opponent is the confidant. There is an old saying in China that it is easy to get a daughter, but hard to find a confidant.

Grindelwald is a hard-to-find confidant to Albus Dumbledore, but Pomona never dreamed that the two of them were gay.

The shock was even more exaggerated than the first time she saw the Sphinx and the pyramids in Egypt, although she had never seen one of the seven wonders of mankind.

It's as if Severus doubted Sirius's orientation, thinking that he had an affair with James Potter, and if Sirius was still alive, he would definitely turn into a dog and bite the old bat.

"Merlin's beard, what happened here!!!?"

Pomona yelled at the Louvre.

After nightfall, the lights of the glass pyramid of the Louvre are on, and it looks like an Egyptian relative reflecting the sun, not like the phantom feeling during the day.

Human lights tried their best to create a brilliant effect, and the pools around the pyramids also reflected the sky and lights, but the scenery in the pool water was not the night scene of Paris with the full moon in the sky, but the Egyptian daytime with the scorching sun in the sky.

It is said that mirages often occur in the desert under the scorching sun. Those illusory oases will lead the lost people to the wrong direction, and eventually die of thirst or exhaustion.

She couldn't tell for a moment whether it was her eyesight or another wizard's hallucination, because the strolling Muggles in the Louvre Square didn't seem to notice.

"Have you ever seen such a sight?" Severus asked Gonseil.

His Excellency the Earl, who was about to change jobs, shook his head in horror.

"I've never seen one grow up that big."

"You mean, it's too late to regret it now?" Severus asked Pomona.

Pomona shook her head.

"I don't know what to say anymore, my dear, since we're all here, let's go exploring."