In an interview on French Egyptomania

Your fourth book is all about a giraffe – Michael Allin’s Zarafa.

Yes, Zarafa. This book tells the story of a giraffe that was brought to Paris in 1826. It had been captured and shipped down the Nile and across the Mediterranean in a boat which had a hatch on the deck that was made especially for the accommodation of the giraffe. I like this book because it is the story of an object from Egypt which, like the Dendera Zodiac, was transformed immediately upon its arrival in France into a popular sensation, a spectacle.

Allin’s book is not an academic analysis of French Egyptomania. Although I think Allin is sensitive to the issues of cultural ‘otherness’ that are inevitably involved in any study of Western encounters with Egypt, his book is written for a lay audience and the focus is on telling a story. It gave us a model for writing about the Dendera Zodiac, a similarly spectacular object, that was an alternative to academic analyses of Western ‘Orientalism’.

Another thing that is interesting about the giraffe is that it was sent over as a gift from the viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, whom we write about quite a bit ourselves in our book. Ali was an ambiguous figure, both at home in Egypt as well as in the eyes of his European interlocutors. In this instance, the gift of the giraffe was intended to distract Charles X while Egyptian forces invaded Greece. As political ploy, it didn’t work. But as ambassador from an exotic land, this odd animal captivated the French people for almost two decades, as she lived out her life as part of the royal menagerie.