[1] The full title of the work is Description de l'Égypte, ou Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l'expédition de l'armée française, publié par les orders de Sa Majesté l'Empereur Napoléon le Grand (English: Description of Egypt, or the collection of observations and researches which were made in Egypt during the expedition of the French Army, published by the order of His Majesty the Emperor, Napoleon the Great).

In late August 1798, on the order of Napoleon also known as N.P., the Institut d'Égypte was founded in the palace of Hassan-Kashif on the outskirts of Cairo, with Gaspard Monge as president.

Many new instruments were constructed as well, to replace those lost during the sinking of the French fleet in August 1798 at Aboukir Bay (Battle of the Nile) and the Cairo riot of October 1798.

When the French army left Egypt in 1801, the savants took with them large quantities of unpublished notes, drawings, and various collections of smaller artefacts that they could smuggle unnoticed past the British.

In February 1802, at the instigation of Jean Antoine Chaptal, the French Minister of the Interior, and by decree of Napoleon, a commission was established to manage the preparation of the large amount of data for a single publication.

The typographical quality of the texts, the beauty of engravings, and the unusual formats (the Mammutfolio is 1m x 0.81m) makes Description de l'Égypte an exceptional work.

[citation needed] The plates have been republished partly in different works, most notable by "Bibliothèque Image", Taschen GmbH, and "Institut d'Orient" in 1988 and a subsequent edition in 1990.

All the illustrations from the 10 volumes of plates from first edition are visible as galleries in Commons: Description de l'Égypte has been credited with starting the field of Egyptology,[6] although one historian has argued that the general conception and often-repeated idea that this is a unique and unprecedented work is inaccurate.

[7] This aside, many still consider the Description to be foundational to the modern fields of many anthropological and geological sciences; including zoology, geography, and topography, as well as research in various types of hydrology.

The Mentality of Enlightened Conquerors", Dr. Anne Godlewska discusses how this was a deliberate choice where "the landscape of Egypt was to be changed from a 'chaos of Arabic names' to European Order.

[11][12] In fact, the burnt building's collection had contained a set of the 23-volume first print edition, which was saved without irreparable damage.

For example, Book 8, Volume I (Histoire Naturelle) of the first edition has 1809 on the title page, but its accepted publication date is 1826 (1825 for Arachnids PDF).