Carthage enters Edward Said’s discussion through Chateaubriand’s itinerary, not as a developed portrait of the ancient city but as one of the ruins the traveler seeks out to complete a self-appointed circuit of historical study. Its significance lies in that double role: a material remnant of antiquity and a destination folded into Chateaubriand’s intensely personal Orientalist performance.

Place in Chateaubriand’s itinerary

After traveling in North America, Chateaubriand set out for the Orient in 1805–1806. He conceived the journey as a completion of his studies: having examined Roman and Celtic antiquity, he still wanted to see the ruins of Athens, Memphis, and Carthage. The city therefore appears within a carefully ordered itinerary of monuments, rather than as an independently described place. It helps complete the geographical and antiquarian circle Chateaubriand had constructed for himself.

Departure from Egypt

Carthage belongs to the next stage of the route after Egypt. Chateaubriand leaves Egypt for Tunis, proceeds to the Carthaginian ruins, and ultimately returns home. The text supplies no account of what he sees or does at Carthage itself; the city’s presence is established by its place in this sequence, between his departure from Egypt and his homecoming.

Antiquity and the traveler’s self-fashioning

The itinerary makes ancient sites serve Chateaubriand’s project of self-completion and image-making. Carthage is named alongside Athens and Memphis as a remaining monument of knowledge, and thus as part of a survey whose organizing purpose is the traveler’s own sense of completion. Said’s broader contrast clarifies the stakes: unlike Edward Lane, who subordinated his ego to Orientalist authority, Chateaubriand made what he said about the Orient dependent on his ego. The surviving reference to Carthage consequently reveals more about the structure of Chateaubriand’s travel narrative than about the city’s history or condition.