The Master Game: Unmasking the Secret Rulers of the World

by Graham Hancock

  We may perhaps wonder if French artists such as Houdon, Denon and David were not somewhat bedazzled by Joséphine – who they went on to promote as the new Isis and thus the new tutelary goddess of continental Freemasonry and of the city of Paris.The reader will recall that in 1773, Court de Gébelin, Freemason, member of the Nine Sisters lodge and inventor of the modern Tarot, had written: No one ignores that Paris was originally enclosed in the island [the Île de la Cité]. It was thus, since its origins, a city of navigation … As it was in a river rife with navigation, it took as its symbol a boat, and as tutelary goddess, Isis, goddess of navigation; and this boat was the actual one of Isis, symbol of this goddess.53

  The association with the ‘Parisian’ boat of Isis and the notion of ‘empire’ is explained by the early 19th century Parisian historian, François Noël: The boat of Isis, a feast which was celebrated in Rome with great pomp, was known as Navigium Isidis; after it had been launched in the water, it was brought back to the Temple of Isis and prayers were made for the prosperity of the Emperor, for the Empire and for the Roman people …54

  Dates and words

  In the brief period of Napoleon's occupation of Egypt, from 1798 to 1801, there were witnessed some events that gave a mythical sparkle to this otherwise doomed adventure.

  First there is the matter of the date – 5 March 1798 – on which the Directory voted in favour of sending Napoleon to ‘liberate’ Egypt. Given the intense Masonic and Isiaic interests of some of the protagonists, it would be unusual if no one had realised that 5 March was the Feast of the ‘Boat of Isis’, the Navigium Isidis, widely popular during the Roman Empire and subsequently in ancient France (Gaul).

  Second there are the confusing circumstances surrounding the naval Battle of Abu Qir, the shallow bay to the east of Alexandria where Nelson obliterated Napoleon's fleet on 1 August 1798. Abu Qir was the site of the ancient city of Canopus where legend has it that the ship carrying the Trojan lovers, Paris and Helen, long ago took refuge. Helen, as we recall from Chapter Ten, had been associated by Herodotus with an Egyptian deity who he called ‘Aphrodite the Stranger’. The Alexandrians identified Aphrodite with Isis, and both Helen and Isis were well known to be protectors of mariners and ships. Moreover, the star of Isis – Sirius – was the Stella Maris, the ‘Star of the Sea’, also known as the ‘Star of the East’ or ‘Star of the Orient’. Surely Napoleon and his erudite friends in Egypt would have been aware how highly evocative of all these mythical archetypes was the act of anchoring the flagship l’Orient at Abu Qir-Canopus?

  We concede at once that the question is highly speculative, but Napoleon's mindset at the time does not exclude such links being made. Of Corsican origins, he remained all his life a very superstitious man, and considered Joséphine to be his ‘lucky charm’, a sort of human talisman. His extremely superstitious nature meant that he was always on the lookout for omens. French historian Jean Duché reports an occasion when Napoleon, having been openly criticized by a cardinal about his military campaigns, grabbed the cardinal by the sleeve, dragged him to a window, and, in broad daylight, asked him if he could see ‘the star’. When the baffled cardinal retorted that there was no ‘star’ to be seen, Napoleon replied: Well, as long as I shall be the only one to see it, then I will follow my own destiny and will not permit anyone to criticize me!55

  To any French Freemason the word ‘Orient’ in the name of Napoleon's flagship would inevitably be reminiscent of the ‘Mother Lodge’ in Paris known as the Grand Orient i.e. the ‘Great East’. In Masonic jargon to this day the word ‘Orient’ or ‘East’ denotes the name/place of the main Masonic temple in any town or city, and the term ‘Grand Orient’ or ‘Great East’ denotes the mother temple or lodge in a country.56 For example, the Grand Orient denotes the main Masonic Temple of Paris in the Rue Cadet; likewise the ‘Great East’ denotes Freemasons’ Hall of London.

  Masonic Emperor Of The French?

  There are no primary source documents that prove Napoleon was a Freemason; nor are there any that disprove this proposition. There has, however, been much learned speculation on both sides, with some scholars arguing vehemently that he was an initiated Mason57 and some arguing equally vehemently that he was not.58

  Many continental Freemasons in the 19th century certainly acted as though Napoleon was a member of the brotherhood. There were dozens of Masonic lodges in Europe that bore his name such as the Saint Napoleon lodge in Paris, the Napoleomagne lodge in Toulouse, the Napoleone lodge in Florence, La Constellation Napoleon in Naples, the Étoile Napoleon in Madrid and so on – with lodges usually choosing names that evoked Napoleon's military, social and cultural achievements.59

  We know for sure that Napoleon's strategic entourage was filled with prominent Freemasons such as Talleyrand, Gaspard Monge, Jean Baptiste Kléber, André Masséna and others. We know too that most members of Napoleon's family were Freemasons, including his own father, Charles Bonaparte, his brothers Jérôme, Louis, and Joseph, his wife, Joséphine and his brother-in-law, Joachim Murat.60 Historian and Masonic author, François Collaveri, asserts with confidence that: … the initiation of Napoleon is not a legend; he was initiated into Freemasonry probably in Egypt as is expressly claimed by the Grand Orient of France.61

  Other authorities go as far as to argue that Napoleon, as well as his general, Jean-Baptiste Kléber, underwent their Egyptian Masonic initiation inside the Great Pyramid of Giza at the hands of a Coptic sage.62

  Kléber, the son of an operative Mason, had practiced architecture in Paris long before joining Napoleon's army. In 1787, two years before the French Revolution, he had designed an Egyptian-style temple for the Parc d’Études in Paris.63 Few had any direct acquaintance with ancient Egyptian temples at that time and Kléber's design bears little resemblance to any of the existing ancient temples in Egypt – though from the décor that he also designed it is likely that he had a ‘Temple of Isis’ in mind.

  According to historian Paul Naudon, Kléber founded Egypt's first modern Masonic lodge which he predictably named La Loge Isis.64 In June 1800, however, two years after arriving in Egypt, he was murdered by an Arab fanatic. Kléber's corpse was embalmed and shipped back to France. When the coffin arrived in Paris in late September, Denon made plans for the construction of a replica of the Egyptian Temple of Dendera to be raised at the Place des Victoires in Paris as a mausoleum for the great general.65

  Napoleon researches Isis

  After his return from Egypt Napoleon was to develop a rather curious fascination with the goddess Isis. Indeed so strong was his interest that he eventually set up a special commission, headed by the scholar Louis Petit-Radelin, to confirm the ancient legend (reported by Corrozet, Dupuis and others) that Isis was the true and ancient tutelary deity of the city of Paris. Napoleon apparently expressed a specific interest in the so-called boat of Isis and its alleged connection with the ‘Boat of Paris’ found in the coat-of-arms of the city.66 After a year or so of research into this matter, the special commission was able to report to Napoleon that there was, in fact, much evidence to support the claim that the boat of Isis was, indeed, the very same as the Boat of Paris.67 Highly impressed by these findings, Napoleon issued instructions on 20 January 1811 that a figure of the Egyptian goddess and her ‘star’ should now be included on the coat-of-arms of Paris: We have previously authorised and do also authorise now by these present signed documents by our hand, that our good city of Paris will bear the coat-of-arms as shown and coloured on the attached drawing, at the front of the ancient ship, the prow loaded with a statue of Isis, seated, in silver on a sea of the same, and lead by a star also of silver.68

  The drawing that was attached to Napoleon's letter is today kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.69 On this drawing can be seen the red, gold and silver coat-of-arms surrounded by a wreath of wheat. The whole is surmounted by a golden crown on which is perched the imperial eagle. The crown is transpierced by the Hermetic caduceus, the entwined winged-snakes. The main image is t
he silver boat floating on a silver sea. On its prow is the goddess Isis seated on a throne and guided by a five-pointed star hovering in front of the boat. Above the boat are three golden bees, symbolizing divine solar rule.

  Interestingly, the same group of symbols also turns up in the Description de l’Égypte published by Denon – on the dedication of which Napoleon's name, denoted by the letter ‘N’, is seen surrounded by the Hermetic coiled snake surmounted by a crown and placed next to a pharaonic cartouche inside which is drawn a bee and a five-pointed star.

  Napoleon appointed Denon as first director of the newly opened Musée Napoléon housed at the Louvre. At the same time he commissioned the architects Charles Percier and Pierre François Léonard Fontaine to design the Cour Carrée on the east side of the Louvre, and the artist Jean-Guillaume Moitte to decorate the eastern façade of the inner gateway. Moitte chose to have the most famous lawgivers of history, Moses and Numa, flank a statue of the goddess Isis seated on a throne. Next to Isis can be seen the legendary Inca solar emperor and lawmaker Manco Cápac.70

  Three decades later, when Napoleon's body was repatriated from his place of exile in St. Helena and placed in the mausoleum at Les Invalides in Paris, the renowned sculptor and architect Louis-Tullis Visconti designed the final decorations on the circular walls surrounding the former emperor's large sarcophagus. In one of the scenes Visconti sculpted a representation of Napoleon as a solar god-king much resembling Manco Cápac and Sol Invictus, showing the revered French general seated on a throne, barechested and with the solar rays shooting out of his head, his arm outstretched handing the ‘law’ to the many nations of his empire …

  The Place of the Star

  The most famous monument of Paris, one that was commissioned by Napoleon himself in 1806, is, of course, the Arc de Triomphe at the western end of the Champs-Élysées.71 The name of the location must have had a special resonance for Napoleon, for so long as anyone could remember it had been called L’Étoile, the ‘Star’. Given his obsession with his own ‘star of destiny’ and his obvious interest in the connection between Isis and the city of Paris, it is not impossible that the ‘star’ in question was imagined by Napoleon to be Sirius. There is, moreover, a rather unusual depiction on the Arc de Triomphe that is highly implicit of Isis and her connection to Napoleon. On the east face of the monument is the commonly called ‘Triumph of Napoleon’ sculpted by the artist Jean-Pierre Cortot in 1833.72 The scene shows ‘Victory’ (a naked woman) crowning Napoleon (who is wearing the toga of a Roman emperor) with a laurel wreath. A Roman goddess wearing a ‘tower’ on her head (supposedly symbolising a town surrendering to Napoleon) is seen kneeling at the emperor's feet.

  The kneeling goddess is, in fact, Cybele, and had clearly been modelled by Cortot from the figure of a Roman goddess wearing a ‘tower’ on her head found in Paris in 1675 when the foundations of the church of Saint-Eustache were being excavated.73 According to Claude du Molinet, the bishop of St. Genevieve who published the find in 1683, this effigy was: The one that the Greeks called Io and the Egyptians called Isis, and is the same as the one the Romans honored under the same of Cybele, being the Earth or Nature that the Egyptians married to Osiris who was the Sun, in order to make it fertile and mother of all productions that form within her breasts …74

  Thus in the minds of French historians of the 17th century, the goddess with the tower headdress was none other than a representation of Isis, for the latter, too ‘had also a tower on her head’75 (as indeed she does in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, although what looks like a ‘tower’ is, in fact, a throne).

  In addition it would not be too farfetched to equate the kneeling figure on the Arc de Triomphe with the Empress Joséphine wearing the ‘crown of Isis’ in Paris – for this scene brings sharply to mind the famous painting by David of the coronation of Joséphine and Napoleon in December 1804 sanctioned by the presence of the pope.76 In the painting Napoleon is shown wearing the laurel-wreath of Roman emperors while Joséphine is seen kneeling at his feet, herself wearing the empress's crown. The same scene is depicted on the Arc de Triomphe, where Napoleon is again garbed as a Roman emperor and crowned with laurel while Isis-Cybele kneels at his feet, herself wearing the crown-tower of the goddess.

  We saw in Chapter Sixteen how the main axis of Paris (running through the monumental avenue of the Champs-Élysées) was aligned by Le Nôtre, either by coincidence or by deliberation, 26° north-of-west towards the sunset on two religiously important days of the year (8 May and 6 August) and, also looking back, 26° south-of-east towards the cosmic rising of the star Sirius. We also saw that this arrangement correlates with the main axis of the great solar temple complex of Karnak-Luxor which is likewise directed 26° north-of-west towards the sunset and, looking back, 26° south-of-east towards the heliacal (dawn) rising of Sirius at the beginning of Egypt's civilization. We know that Sirius was the herald of the ‘birth’ of solar kings. And we've seen how Napoleon endowed the city of Paris with a new coat-of-arms blatantly displaying the goddess Isis and her star Sirius, and how he also commissioned a huge arch to be raised at the ‘place of the star’ right on the centerline of the axis of Paris. All these interlocking themes, when considered together, become even more intriguing when we add to them one further fact of history. In 1831, just as Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe was being completed, there was also brought to Paris an ancient Egyptian obelisk – the obelisk of Ramses II as the reader will recall, one of a pair that had originally stood outside the Temple of Luxor in Upper Egypt but now destined for a place of choice along the axis of Paris.

  How France had a second revolution

  The year 1831 was special for the French, for it followed the country's second great popular ‘revolution’, that of July 1830 when the restored monarchy under Charles X, a brother of Louis XVI, was toppled – never to return. This second revolution was engineered by France's and America's most famous Freemason, the Marquis de Lafayette, who personally masterminded the coup d’état that brought the ‘Citizen King’ Louis-Philippe d’Orléans, eldest son of Philippe Égalité, into power.

  To French Freemasonry on both sides of the Atlantic it must have appeared as if the ‘Blazing Star’ or ‘Star of the Orient’ had finally risen over the horizon of Paris. Not surprisingly then, when the young Citizen King took charge of the completion of the Arc de Triomphe, it was proposed that the top of this monument should be decorated with a huge, golden five-pointed star.77

  Let us see how the 1830 ‘Revolution’ came to be.

  After Napoleon's shattering defeat at Waterloo at the hands of the British on 18 June 1815, the emperor ‘abdicated’ and was exiled for life to the island of St. Helena. France was left with a terrible sense of failure, shame and utter confusion, and, in the chaos that followed, the people were coaxed to agree to the unthinkable – the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.

  In 1814 the Count of Provence, the younger brother of Louis XVI, became the newly restored king of France as Louis XVIII. Ironically, all was back to square one for the Republicans and the Bonapartists. But there was really no choice in this matter. A new Republic at that time would have been completely out of the question, let alone a ‘successor’ to Napoleon. It seemed to everyone that a constitutional monarchy à l'anglaise (‘in the English manner’) was the only realistic option. But the wellsprings of the Revolution were far from dry.

  Tensions quickly began to develop between those who wanted the French Revolution to be an ongoing process and those others who wanted a return to the Old Regime of totalitarian monarchy. A group of zealous royalists, known as the Ultras, started a political movement which became known as the ‘White Terror’. It aimed to eradicate all traces of the Revolution and to purge France of those who had supposedly ‘betrayed’ the monarchy before and after the fall of the Bastille.

  Although the king secretly sanctioned the Ultras, publicly, at least at first, he wanted to be seen as a moderate. To this end he took as his prime minister the famous industrialist É
lie Decazes, bestowed on him the title of Duke, and relied on the latter's high reputation as a reasonable and just man to win the support of the people. In this indirect manner Louis XVIII hoped to ride out the growing political storm that was brewing between Royalists and Republicans.

  Decazes was a prominent Freemason. In 1818, the year before he was appointed prime minister, he had become the Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. It is believed by some Masonic historians that even Louis XVIII was initiated into Freemasonry. This apparently was done in 1775 when he was still the Count of Provence. It is also said that Louis XVIII’s brother, the Count of Artois (the future Charles X), was a Freemason and that both belonged to the lodge Les Trois Frères.78

  It seems that Louis XVIII naïvely supposed that Freemasonry in France was still that quaint club frequented by aristocrats and the high bourgeoisie that he had known before the Revolution. But, of course, he was much mistaken. At first, with the influence of Decazes at court, everyone had hoped that the king would slowly be swayed towards a British-style parliamentary monarchy. But any chance of this happening was completely shattered on 13 February 1821 when a Republican fanatic, Louis Pierre Louvel, shot dead the young Duke of Berry, Charles Ferdinand d’Artois, who was the king's nephew.