The Pyramid Scheme: An Egyptophile’s Wandering Through the Obelisks and Oddities of Paris

 

There are days in Paris when the sky turns the color of old marble—creamy, cracked, faintly hieroglyphic if you squint—and you feel like you’re walking through a living museum curated by Napoleon himself, fresh off his Egyptian misadventure and drunk on sand-swept dreams. And if, like me, you’re an unrepentant Egyptophile—someone who keeps a scarab paperweight on his desk and a paperback Book of the Dead in his bag for “light reading”—then Paris isn’t just a city. It’s a coded love letter to the Nile, written in limestone and glass, signed by sphinxes.

Step One: Follow the Hathor-Headed Breadcrumbs

I begin at Passage du Caire, which sounds exotic until you realize it's a slightly grimy arcade in the 2nd arrondissement where the scent of discount textiles mingles with the ghosts of the 18th century. 

But look up—always look up—and you’ll see it: Hathor herself, cow-eared and implacable, carved into the façade like a guardian of Parisian secrets. The entrance façade is decorated with 3 heads of the ancient Egyptian goddess of love, beauty, joy, music, fertility, and motherhood. 

This passage was opened in 1798, the same year Napoleon was playing sand-soldier in Egypt, triggering a wave of Egyptomania back home. Granted, le petit caporal didn't invent the French fascination with all things Ancient Egypt; Renaissance culture in Europe had already imported Egyptianizing objects, and 18th-century neoclassicism tended to use obelisks, sphinxes, pyramids, and "mysterious" hieroglyphic ornaments. However, before 1798, much of this was fragmentary, antiquarian, or decorative. All that was known about the ancient civilisation was gleaned from travel accounts, biblical imagination, classical authors, mummies, obelisks, and ruins. Napoleon's Egyptian campaign to undermine British trade routes to India was a major turning point, as it was considered both a military operation and a scientific expedition with 160 scholars, engineers, and artists charged with studying Egypt in many scholarly disciplines. The result? The monumental Description de l'Egypte. The 23 volumes, presenting observations and research made during the campaign, were published between 1809 and 1822 and gave designers as well as architects a repertoire of Egyptian forms. 

Less than 250 years later, I order an espresso in a nearby café and contemplate the architecture. To the modern eye seems like a blend of orientalist fantasy and imperial pride. Edward Said would not be impressed. Anne Godlewska's article "A New Look at the Description de L'Égypte" says as much - treating the oeuvre of Napoleon's scholars as a form of intellectual conquest rather than neutral documentation -  converting military occupation into cultural capital. Even though the French campaign failed politically and militarily, it succeeded in producing books, collections, and styles that reshaped European visual culture and, with it, ambivalent ideas about ancient Egypt. 

Step Two: The Sphinxes Have Opinions

Next stop on the Egyptian Revival tour: the Fontaine du Fellah. Tucked down Rue de Sèvres, it’s another monument to France’s obsession with exoticism disguised as public plumbing. Attached to the wall of the former Hôpital Laënnec complex, it resembles a simplified Egyptian temple façade - in a recessed niche you'll find a statue in pharaonic costume — likely a Roman copy of Antinous-as-Osiris (a mouthful, I know)—standing above dry spouts, looking both serene and slightly exasperated. Honestly, same.

Napoleon commissioned it to commemorate his "glorious" campaign in Egypt, which, in classic Western fashion, was equal parts cultural appropriation and military flop. Still, the man had vision, one that was tied to his urban water program to improve Paris's public water supply. And the messaging here is fairly clear.  The top of the structure, instead of the traditional Egyptian sun disc, has an imperial eagle with outstretched wings. 

Step Three: Behold the Original Clickbait

The Obélisque de Louxor, planted like a golden dagger in the heart of the Place de la Concorde, is next. At over 3,000 years old, it predates democracy, designer handbags, and is an actual piece of ancient Egypt in the French capital. The obelisk was originally one of a pair standing before the Temple of Luxor at ancient Thebes. The French Ministry of Culture states that it dates to the 13th century BCE, was carved from pink granite from Syene / Aswan, measures about 23 meters, and weighs 222 tonnes, plus a 240-tonne pedestal. Its four sides are covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions and offering scenes glorifying Ramesses II. 

It was offered to France in 1829 by Méhémet Ali, viceroy of Egypt, partly in recognition of Jean-François Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822. And to be fair, how could international diplomacy work any better than in the fancy bartering with politically useful giant rocks erected in a place that witnessed the executions of  Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette? 

Today tourists circle it, snapping selfies with a stone that saw Ramses II rise before France even existed. It's Egyptomania as possession, diplomacy, and urban symbolism. I stand beneath it, feeling like an extra in a Cecil B. DeMille remake of Amélie. Somewhere nearby, a man in linen trousers sketches hieroglyphs in a Moleskine. I nod. He nods. There’s an understanding here.

Step Four: Hieroglyphics and Hipsters

Cinéma Le Louxor in the 10th is where Egyptomania gets its Gatsby on. Built in 1921 and rescued from decay with a facelift that would make Nefertiti blush, it’s now an Art Deco temple of indie films and ironic popcorn. 

Its first owner, Henry Zilberberg / Silberberg, commissioned the architect Henri Zipcy to design it. The cinema’s own page states that the interior neo-Egyptian decoration was by Amédée Tiberti, who drew inspiration from antiquities in the Louvre. It originally had 1,195 seats and was an immediate public success. 

The exterior is marked by colorful mosaics, stylized lotus and papyrus forms, Egyptianizing columns, geometric bands, round windows, and a large sign reading “Louxor – Palais du Cinéma.” It stands on the threshold of the second wave of Egyptomania, just before the discovery of Tutankhamus's tomb in 1922.  Unlike the Passage du Caire or the Fontaine du Fellah, this is Egyptomania in the age of mass entertainment, when ancient Egypt has become a visual shorthand for spectacle, luxury, mystery, and escape. Le Louxor is not Egypt as conquest, but Egypt as cinema. 

Step Five: The Pyramid Scheme

And finally: the Louvre Pyramid, modernism’s glassy wink at eternity. Commissioned by Mitterrand, who—let’s be honest—had a soft spot for both grandeur and mystery. The pyramid, made of glass and metal, was designed by I. M. Pei as part-portal, part-provocation. And critics in the 1980s hated it, particularly objecting to placing a stark contemporary geometric structure in the courtyard of a historic royal palace. 

Time, as it always does, crowned it. 

The Louvre itself now frames this initial controversy as part of the pyramid’s history. The crucial point may, however, be that Pei did not cover the Louvre with Egyptian ornament. He used the pure pyramid form as geometry, light, and circulation. The result is not necessarily revivalist in the 19th or 20th century sense. It is a modern intervention that happens to summon one of the most recognizable Egyptian architectural shapes. 

A point which I had ample occasion to contemplate as I waited in line for about 2 hours to enter the museum through the pyramid and to see the actual ancient Egyptian artefacts. Amid sarcophagi and shattered dynasties, I find a statue of a scribe—kneeling, serene, wise. I sit across from him. Sadyl, we have no time to exchange silent philosophies. Too many people. 

Exit Through the Gift Shop (and Existentialism)

Being an Egyptophile in Paris is like chasing shadows with a sunlamp—everything is a reflection of something older, somewhere warmer. The city wears its Egyptomania like a vintage silk scarf: chic, mysterious, slightly faded.

So I walk. 

Through streets named for lost battles and forgotten gods. Past metro stations echoing with the hum of modernity and the whisper of mummified dreams. I sip a matcha latte at Kitsune; this one is much more to my taste. I walk further back through the gardens. I see a sphinx and smile

AI-generated 

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