Having taken advantage of a sound education that emphasized mathematics, drawing and painting, then having been given some experience at sea through the efforts of his father, Antoine-Marie, a naval officer, charting the coastal waters of Newfoundland, in 1814, aged fifteen.

Having passed his entrance exams, young Linant embarked as a naval cadet on the frigate Cléopâtre, engaged on a mission to Greece, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, which he spent making drawings and doing relief mapping.

One of the artists attached to the expedition having suddenly died, Linant was commissioned to replace him, drawing sites and ruins in Athens, Constantinople, Ephesus, Akka and Jerusalem.

In 1820, he joined the expedition of the French consul general and explorer Bernardino Drovetti to the oasis of Siwa in the Libyan Desert, where the oracle of Ammon had been consulted by Alexander the Great but to which no modern European had penetrated; his drawings illustrated the Voyage à l'Oasis de Syouah, published by E. Jomard (1823).

Within a few months he travelled with the Italian Alessandro Ricci to Sinai: the party left Cairo and followed the peninsula's eastern coast, passing through the Wells of Moses, Wadi Gharandel and Khazne Firaoun, to arrive at Maghara, where they made copies of the hieroglyphic inscriptions.

In 1854 Lesseps obtained from the viceroy Muhammad Sa'id the firman for the canal concession on behalf of the Compagnie universelle du canal maritime de Suez,[1] and Linant was named chief engineer, in which capacity he was soon assisted by the French hydraulics engineer Mougel, for Linant continued in charge of public works, as director general (1862), as Minister of Public Works (1869) and member of the viceroy's council.