Napoleon Stranded Scientists in Egypt and Now We Have Archaeology

• Napoleon Bonaparte brought engineers, architects, and scientists when he invaded Egypt.
• In three stages, these “savants” meticulously illustrated the ruins of ancient Egypt.
• Their scientific approach helped bring about archaeology as we know it today.

General Napoleon Bonaparte is remembered as a crusader, tyrant, and initiator of a series of wars.

But one of his lesser-known offenses — abandoning a crew of scholars and scientists in Egypt — led to the unexpected byproduct of formal archaeology as we know it today.

When the French general invaded Egypt in 1798 — an event depicted somewhat ahistorically in the Ridley Scott film “Napoleon” — he brought along more than 150 engineers, mathematicians, and naturalists.

Napoleon wanted these “savants,” as scientists were called at the time, to focus on projects that could benefit France, such as purifying water from the Nile River, hops-free beer brewing, and better bread ovens.

Just a year later, Napoleon secretly returned to France to stage a coup and seize power, leaving his savant squad and 30,000 troops behind. They stayed until defeat forced them to retreat in 1801.

While the soldiers fought, some of the savants got busy conducting archaeological surveys.

The ruins of Upper Egypt wowed one of Napoleon’s first savants

“Very few of the scholars were antiquarians, those quintessentially eighteenth-century characters, mostly wealthy, who filled their curiosity cabinets with strange old objects picked up on their travels, barely understanding what they had,” Nina Burleigh writes in her book, “Mirage,” about Napoleon’s scientists in Egypt. “Collecting old objects without understanding their use or meaning was a pastime for gentlemen, not a scientific undertaking.”

In short, these men were approaching the exploration of Egypt with a different attitude that was more scientific.

At the time, many Europeans had heard of the Great Pyramids or the Sphinx, but the ancient temples and monuments of Upper Egypt were unknown.

Dominique-Vivant Denon, an artist and writer, accompanied Napoleon’s soldiers up the Nile. He wrote about rounding a river bend to suddenly see the ancient temples of Karnak and Luxor rising from the ruins of Thebes.

“The whole army, suddenly and with one accord, stood in amazement… and clapped their hands with delight,” he wrote, according to Scientific American.

Denon returned to France with Napoleon and quickly published a book with his descriptions and drawings, “Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt.”

That was not enough for Denon, though, who pushed for sending more savants to the Nile to document its monuments in greater detail.

Napoleon approved, and two fresh commissions of savants arrived in Egypt on an archaeological mission in September 1799.

Napoleon’s savants published a giant encyclopedia of Egypt

This crew of young architects and engineers made careful drawings and measurements of a large number of ancient structures. Their depictions were so faithful that they preserved inscriptions that have since disappeared, according to Scientific American.

All these surveys were published in “La Description de l’Egypte,” a multi-volume tome that included maps, hundreds of copper engravings, and essays describing what they’d learned about Egypt.

It divided Egypt into ancient and modern times, and launched the modern vision of ancient Egypt as we know it today.

“La Description de l’Egypte” was extremely popular. The structures, symbols, and images of ancient Egypt became fashionable features of European art and architecture.

Europe’s Egypt obsession led to its first museums of archaeology

Goaded on by Napoleon’s savant expeditions, the European fascination with ancient Egypt gave rise to archaeological museums in Europe, beginning with the Louvre opening the first Egyptian museum in 1827.

Eventually, this fascination led to the field of Egyptology, which has been a heavy influence in modern archaeology.

“Napoleon’s scholars and engineers are remembered most as men who helped found archaeology as a science,” Burleigh writes.