Literature & Aesthetics 21 (1) June 2011, page 175 Out of Africa: Tarot‟s Fascination With Egypt Helen S. Farley Introduction Mention „tarot‟ and images of an exotic and mysterious gypsy fortune-teller spring unbidden to consciousness. Dark eyes flashing, she reveals the trumps one at a time, each a strange portent, preternaturally speaking of life, love, loss, and death. The gypsies, themselves enigmatic and of uncertain origin, were allegedly charged with carrying the tarot deck from a doomed Egyptian priesthood with the forethought to encode their most esoteric secrets in a game, a seemingly harmless pastime. How often have we heard that tarot‟s difficult birth occurred in an Egypt ancient and mystical? And though tarot scholars have known about the real origins of the deck in the Renaissance court of a northern Italian city for some two hundred years, still that link with Egypt remains obdurate. This beguiling myth, never convincingly verified by its perpetrators, began in the desire for pseudo-legitimacy through an ancient – though false – lineage and the dogged persistence of a pre-Rosetta infatuation with all things Egyptian. This article explores the origins of this persistent belief. Egyptomania in France By the beginning of the nineteenth century, all of France was enraptured with the exploits of their new leader, Napoleon Bonaparte. He had secured victory for France across Western Europe and had consolidated French power in Egypt. In the true spirit of the Enlightenment, Napoleon had taken a bevy of scientists and archaeologists with him to this ancient land and they ensured a steady stream of Egyptian artefacts and information about the distant locale travelled back to France. 1 Occultists were quick to incorporate Egyptian lore into their schemes. There was a common belief that the land of the Nile was the Helen S. Farley is Mission Leader (Mobility) at the Australian Digital Futures Institute at the University of Southern Queensland. A version of this article will also appear as „Tarot and Egyptomania‟, in Tarot in Culture, ed. Emily Auger (Melbourne: ATS, 2011) [forthcoming]. 1 John David Wortham, British Egyptology: 1549-1906 (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1971), p. 49.