In 1843 he met the Egyptologist Émile Prisse d'Avennes, who instilled in him an interest in the subject that was confirmed during a visit to the Leiden museum in 1846.

That year he joined the Louvre's Department of Egyptian Antiquities with the task of cataloging the many objects that Auguste Mariette had discovered during his excavations and sent to France.

A month later Devéria, Rhoné and some friends sailed to Egypt, where they visited Alexandria, Cairo, Memphis, and saw the work on the Suez Canal by Ferdinand de Lesseps.

The renowned Sir E. A. Wallis Budge noted of him, "No other scholar had such a wide and competent knowledge of the Book of the Dead", and that his death was a "great loss" to Egyptology.

[4] Among his contributions was the first critical assessment of the interpretation made by Joseph Smith of Egyptian vignettes that appear in the Mormon scripture the Book of Abraham.