Sometime during the ninth century a famous Arab leader, Caliph Al Mamun, broke into the Great Pyramid in Egypt. There he found what early historians referred to as a stone statue. Inside the statue was a man wearing a gold breastplate that was covered in gems. His weapons lay by his side. They included a fabulously fine sword and shield. Someone had placed a huge ruby on his head indicating that this man was royalty. Egyptians were not usually buried in their armour but we are told that Alexander the Great was. So if this was Alexander, who put him there and why? To find out I have explored ancient legends, documents and medieval paintings. What I found was truly astonishing and leads to, what I believe could well be the final resting place of Alexander the Great. Alexander, A New Theory on An Ancient Legend offers up a new hypothesis as to what may have happened to Alexander the Great many centuries after his death.

The explorations of eighteenth-century travellers to the 'European frontiers' were often geared to define the cultural, political, and historical boundaries of 'European civilization.' In an age when political revolutions shocked nations into reassessing what separated the civilised from the barbaric, how did literary travellers contemplate the characteristics of their continental neighbours? Focusing on the writings of British travellers, we see how a new view of Europe was created, one that juxtaposed the customs and living conditions of populations in an attempt to define 'modern' Europe against a 'yet unenlightened' Europe.

“A real-life story of intrigue, sacrifice and distrust in a country at war—the first complete account of the stone itself.”—Ancient Egypt In 1798, young French general Napoleon Bonaparte entered Egypt with a veteran army and a specialist group of savants—scientists, engineers, and artists—his aim being not just conquest, but the rediscovery of the lost Nile kingdom. A year later, in the ruins of an old fort in the small port of Rosetta, the savants made a startling discovery: a large, flat stone, inscribed in Greek, demotic Egyptian, and ancient hieroglyphics. This was the Rosetta Stone, key to the two-thousand-year mystery of hieroglyphs, and to Egypt itself. Two years later, French forces retreated before the English and Ottoman armies, but would not give up the stone. Caught between the opposing generals at the siege of Alexandria, British special agents went in to find the Rosetta Stone, rescue the French savants, and secure a fragile peace treaty. Discovery at Rosetta uses French, Egyptian, and English eyewitness accounts to tell the complete story of the discovery, decipherment, and capture of the Rosetta Stone, investigating the rivalries and politics of the time, and the fate of the stone today.