More on 'Le Déscription' at the Dahesh

http://tinyurl.com/kxwja (nj.com)

"The Dahesh Museum has a show devoted to 'Le Déscription', Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt, that includes many engravings and two rare complete editions. The "Déscription" is a folio-sized series of 13 volumes of engravings, many of them beautifully color-printed, and 10 volumes of text assembled by 167 scientists, engineers, economists, mathematicians, botanists, zoologists, artists and scholars who accompanied the 40,000 or so French troops.
While the civilian savants were in Egypt, they kick-started the scientific study of ancient cultures, sort of inventing modern archeology -- not to mention finding the Rosetta Stone, thereby making the translation of hieroglyphics possible."

See the above page for the full story.