It is attributed generally to the public awareness of ancient Egyptian monuments generated by Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, and Admiral Nelson's defeat of the French Navy at the Battle of the Nile later that year.

However, works of art and architecture (such as funerary monuments) in the Egyptian style had been made or built occasionally on the European continent since the time of the Renaissance.

[1] New after the Napoleonic invasion was a sudden increase of the number of works of art and the fact that, for the first time, entire buildings began to be built to resemble those of ancient Egypt.

For Napoleon's intention of cataloguing the sights and findings from the campaign, hundreds of artists and scientists were enlisted to document "antiquities, ethnography, architecture, and natural history of Egypt"; and later these notes and sketches were taken back to Europe.

The content in this archaeological text, includes translation of the Rosetta Stone, pyramids and other scenes, arouse interests in Egyptian arts and culture in Europe and America.

On the other hand, William Capon (1757–1827) suggested a massive pyramid for Shooter's Hill as a National Monument, while George Smith (1783–1869) designed an Egyptian-style tomb for Ralph Abercromby in Alexandria.

2 Place du Caire, from 1828, is essentially in overall form a conventional Parisian structure with shops on the ground floor and apartments above, but with considerable Egyptianizing decoration including a row of massive Hathor heads and a frieze by sculptor J. G.

[16] It was followed by a series of major public buildings in the first half of the 19th century including the 1835 Moyamensing Prison, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, the 1836 Fourth District Police Station in New Orleans and the 1838 New York City jail known as the Tombs.

The most notable Egyptian structure in the United States was the Washington Monument, begun in 1848, this obelisk originally featured doors with cavetto cornices and winged sun disks, later removed.

[18] Some Americans in the 1880s believed that the United States was a nation without art and therefore wanted to innovate in the field of aesthetic design to distinguish it from Egyptian pyramids and obelisks, Greek temples, and Gothic spires.

This may be because the United States of the early 20th century was a confident nation, and the approach of defining one's own spiritual world by establishing a connection to a great civilization like ancient Egypt faded in such a cultural context.

[31] In 1824, French classical scholar and egyptologist Jean-François Champollion published Precis du systeme hieroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens in 1824, which spurred the first notable attempts to decipher the hieroglyphic language in Britain.

[31] Joseph Bonomi the Younger's inscriptions in the entrance lodges to Abney Park Cemetery in 1840 was the first real recorded attempt to compose a legible text.

[31]' Other smaller inscriptions on the cornice of the exhibit entrance feature the names of the builders and a message in Greek wishing for the health and well-being of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert,[31] members of the royal family.