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This article reflects on empathetic feelings that the French Egyptologist should have with her/his welcoming country, according to the ancient concept of ‘metic’, resident foreigner. The cultural as well as the chronological discrepancy between Greece and the research material, and beyond the irreducible differences between Pharonic Egypt and Egypt today, the comparison of a novel such as The Yacoubian Building with its ancient, fictional or papyrological sources opens analogical perspectives on, for example, the concept of passive resistance in Egyptian society.