This campaign was claimed to defend French trade interests. After some initial success in land battles, the French troops were defeated at the Battle of the Nile by British fleet.

Napoleon brought a group of scientists with him in his campaign. His group hence made the first modern scientific records on the pyramids, and the most ground-breaking one is the discovery of the Rossetta stone along the river Nile, a stela in three languages: Greek, Egyptian Hieroglyphs and a short-hand Egyptian script (Coptic) on the story of Cleopatra. This stone called for studies for scholars across Europe and the ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic script was deciphered by a French scholar Jean Francois Champollion.