There is a story, regrettably apocryphal, about Napoleon and the Great Pyramid. When Bonaparte visited Giza during his Nile expedition of 1798 (it goes), he determined to spend a night alone inside the King’s Chamber, the granite-lined vault that lies precisely in the center of the pyramid. This chamber is generally acknowledged as the spot [...]
Archive for the ‘C9th’ Category
Inside the Great Pyramid
Posted: 1 September 2011 in Africa, C19th, C9th, Egypt, Historians and historiography, Mysteries, Sources3
The strange tale of the Warsaw basilisk
Posted: 5 April 2010 in Africa, Austria-Hungary, Britain, C13th, C15th, C16th, C17th, C18th, C9th, Denmark, Italy, Mysteries, Netherlands, Poland, Rumours and panics, SwitzerlandFew creatures have struck more terror into more hearts for longer than the basilisk: a crested snake, hatched from a cock’s egg, that was widely believed to wither landscapes with its breath and kill with a glare. The example to the right comes from a German bestiary, but the earliest description that we have was [...]
