Few past societies can have exerted a broader or stronger cultural attraction in recent times than that of the Nile Valley. This book explores some of the ways in which that appeal has been translated, at the level of modern nation states as well as that of the individual, into expressions of a collective awareness that take Ancient Egypt, and above all pharaonic Egypt, as a model. It looks not only at the effect of European colonialist mentalities on the way that pharaonic society was explored, portrayed, purveyed and exploited, but also at the adoption of Egypt as a resonant image and a paradigm for more far-flung empires, notably in the New World.