Egyptian Women in Napoleon’s Cairo: between Empowerment and Exploitation The three years of French occupation, 1798-1801, brought stunning culture clash and a breakdown of the mores, moralities, and hierarchies of Egyptian society. In no respect was this upheaval more disruptive than in the role of women. For some, the presence of the French was liberating: some slave girls jumped over the walls to go over to Bonaparte’s “Green Zone” in the Azbakia. For others, like the women from Bulaq who were abducted by the French as punishment for the second uprising of Cairo, it was their ruin. Among the elite, there were certain wives of the routed Mamluke amirs, who in the absence of their husbands found themselves empowered in unprecedented ways: acting as intermediaries between the French and the Mamlukes, and assuming the responsibility of paying levies imposed by the occupying forces. On the other hand, elite women were also used as pawns in a power game between men, with many an ambitious Egyptian notable pushing his daughter into the arms of the French in order to curry favor and gain advancement. Liaisons were common between the French and Egyptian women, at all levels, starting with General Menou, the third Commandant in Egypt, who married Zubeida al-Rashidiya and had a son with her. When the French withdrew, the women left behind who were accused of “horizontal collaboration” met with arbitrary fates, from retaliation to rehabilitation. This paper proposes to address specific cases, from contemporary primary sources, of Egyptian women as empowered agents and exploited pawns during the brief but cataclysmic period of the French occupation, with a view to analyzing the interconnection between the roles of occupier/occupied and the power play between the genders.