A Tourist Handbook for Egypt Outside of Egypt (Vol.1 Paris)

Dear tourist, in our walk, we will see not only the Napoleonic victorious conquests that the Parisian streets want us to remember, but we will also encounter the defeats they want us to forget and the colonial greed of which they unwillingly speak.

A Tourist Handbook for Egypt Outside of Egypt is a series of handbooks designed to guide tourists seeking to visit Egyptian sights across European cities. This first volume presents a walking tour in Paris that focuses on Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 military campaign in Egypt. It contains collages combining photographs of Parisian streets named after famous battles from that conquest with 19th-century paintings depicting them. By interweaving these collages with fragments of Napoleon’s speeches to his soldiers and the Egyptian people, I hope to shed critical light on the historical events that these streets commemorate.

In this second edition, I include further a selection of archival illustrations made by the savants who accompanied Napoleon. With these portrayals of Egypt, which were presented as the outcome of an objective scientific expedition, I seek to accentuate the significance of this campaign as a catalyst for a particular, ever-lasting western interest in Egypt.