To finish with the myths on the Bonaparte’s Egyptian expedition, or how France turned to the Muslim-Arab world
Bret Patrice
Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt (1798-1801) undoubtedly was from the very beginning a military adventure which ended in defeat after a predictable «Pyrrhic victory», which was accompanied by the isolation of the army in the sands. In order to understand the reasons and aims of this conquest it is necessary to examine this issue without omissions, while refraining from anachronisms and retrospective judgments that appeal to modern values. The clash of cultures is not limited to the clash of armies and to obvious technical superiority of the Europeans. The expedition opened the possibility to look at the «Other», to the complexity of his culture and the diversity of his essences. Various facts of mastering Egyptian culture by the French were expressed in the borrowings from the most unexpected areas of Egyptian life. These borrowings help us to revise the whole variety of cultural exchange, which manifested itself in the transfer of some of the knowledge from Egypt to France, while in the XIX century started more mass transfer process in the reverse direction.