Well, Joseph had seen this dye in a documentary about Egypt before. The Egyptians had mastered this extraction technique thousands of years ago, and it had remained in use ever since.
Later, Napoleon brought "Egyptian Blue" back to Europe. Its elegant hue swiftly won the favor of the nobility, causing France's shipments of blue textiles to rise by more than thirty percent that very year.
What Joseph had not told Leroy was that "Egyptian cultural consumption" was where the real money lay.
At present, this mysterious ancient nation in the eastern Mediterranean was practically a myth and legend to Europeans.
Historically, the archaeologists Napoleon had brought with him explored Egyptian civilization, sparking an Egyptian craze in Europe that lasted for decades. All manner of Egyptian-style lion-claw chairs, furniture inlaid with papyrus patterns, and Cleopatra-style headdresses instantly became European fashion, driving an astronomical amount of consumption.
In the very year Napoleon returned to France, Egyptian-style sheer gauze dresses accounted for forty percent of all women's clothing produced in Lyon!
The play Cleopatra was staged more than two hundred times in Paris in a single year, every performance sold out.
Even Sphinx-shaped statues sold like mad.
As for other things—archaeological works, specimens of newly discovered species, Egyptian herbs, even mummy powder—they could only be considered extras. Joseph roughly estimated that Egyptian culture could bring France an additional income of over fifty million francs a year!
Of course, the most important thing of all was always the Suez Canal.
He only vaguely remembered that the canal made use of a natural lake called Bitter Lake in its middle section. Everything else would have to rely on French geologists conducting field surveys.
Still, he could at least help the geologists avoid two detours.
First, they could trust the route of the ancient canal from