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Analyses of the ways in which cultural differences are expressed have tended to focus on instances in which one culture responds to an object culture with which it is contemporary. Although this model of cross-cultural dialogue is fraught with hermeneutic challenges, the object culture may at least in principle check and balance mischaracterisations of itself because it inhabits the same time and is able therefore to 'talk back.' However useful this model is for understanding synchronous cultural conversations, it is inapplicable to asynchronous encounters in which the object culture is from another era. The goal of this chapter is to explore certain limitations of two prominent models of cross-cultural hermeneutics: John Rawls' reflective equilibrium and Edward Said's Orientalism. Using Europe's encounter with ancient Egypt during the Napoleonic era as an example, I argue that these frameworks both fail to adequately represent the unique dimensions of the encounter, particularly the feminisation that was projected onto Egyptian society. To accommodate the specifics of such an encounter, I expand and deploy Thomas Kasulis' recent account of cross-cultural differences as stemming from the conceptual orientations he calls 'intimacy' and 'integrity.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]