Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists and the Rediscovery of Egypt

Chronicling the dramatic story of Napoleon's ill-fated bid to add Egypt to the growing French Empire (1798-1801), this exhibition showcases the Description de l'Egypte (1809-28), the seminal multivolume work that remains the most important European scholarly study of ancient and modern Egypt. Napoleon's savants, a group of physicians, engineers, botanists, zoologists, archeologists and other professionals who accompanied the army, created the 10 volumes of engraved plates that comprise the Description, in an ambitious attempt to catalogue of all of Egypt's wonders, from the architectural ruins of a still mysterious ancient civilization to the indigenous flora and fauna.