Soldiers, from the summit of yonder pyramids forty centuries look down upon you.

This line is traditionally attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte during the French campaign in Egypt. It is said to have been addressed to his troops on 21 July 1798, shortly before (or in connection with) the Battle of the Pyramids near Cairo, as he sought to stiffen morale and frame the coming fight as an event of world-historical importance. By invoking the antiquity of the pyramids and “forty centuries,” Napoleon cast the soldiers as actors on a stage watched by the weight of history, linking French revolutionary arms to the grandeur of ancient civilization and to France’s broader political and scientific ambitions in Egypt.

The sentence is a piece of battlefield rhetoric that turns geography into moral pressure. “From the summit of yonder pyramids” makes the landscape itself a witness, while “forty centuries” compresses vast time into a single gaze, implying that the soldiers’ actions will be judged against the longest measure of human achievement. The effect is to elevate an immediate tactical contest into a test of honor and legacy: to fight well is to deserve remembrance; to fail is to disappoint history. It also reflects Napoleon’s talent for myth-making—using grand, memorable phrasing to bind his army’s identity to destiny and to his own narrative of greatness.

1) "Soldats! Du haut de ces pyramides, quarante siècles vous contemplent." 2) "Soldiers! From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries are looking down upon you." 3) "From the top of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on you."