Featured on PDR in the collection Hieroglyphics of a Rope-Dancer: The Book of Fate (1822)

On July 4, 1822, in the midst of London’s most pronounced season of both Egypto- and Napoleonomania, there appeared in bookshops on the Strand, Piccadilly, and Fleet Street a most curious artifact: The Book of Fate: Formerly in the Possession of Napoleon, Late Emperor of France, and Now First Rendered into English from a German Translation of An Ancient Egyptian Manuscript, Found in the Year 1801, by M. Sonnini, in One of the Royal Tombs, Near Mount Libycus, in Upper Egypt. Authored by Herman Kirchenhoffer — Fellow of the University of Pavia, Knight Grand Cross of the Annunciade of Sardinia, and Chevalier of the Legion of Honour — the book featured a large foldout table of “Hieroglyphical Indications of the Planets”, a grid of symbols…