Frédéric Cailliaud

Although he failed to find any sizeable deposits of gold in the mountains along the modern Sudan-Ethiopia border, he did make a sufficiently detailed survey of the area to be published after he returned to France in 1827.

Andrew Bednarski and W. Benson Harer, Jr. write: Shortly after his return, he published Travels in the Oasis of Thebes, with never-before-seen information on the people and places of the Western Desert.

His Travels to Meroë (mer-oh-ay) not only offered similarly pioneering information on the peoples and regions south of the Nile's first cataract, but also constituted the first scientific survey of Sudanese monuments.

In addition, he brought back a large corpus of correctly copied textual material that, along with objects in his newly acquired collection, helped the historian Jean-François Champollion decipher the hieroglyphic language of ancient Egypt.

It has since been recovered, translated, edited, combined with the intended visual material, augmented with supporting chapters and new artwork, and published through AUC Press.