France’s main interest was in Egypt

France’s main interest was in Egypt’s strategic location.
At the time, France and Great Britain were enemies, and each
was trying to increase its economic and political power at the
expense of the other. France saw control over Egypt as a way
to intervene in Great Britain’s ability to rule supreme over
the land and water routes between Europe and India. French
forces met only minimal resistance from Egypt’s military and
settled in for a brief, but influential, three-year occupation of
Egypt. Napoleon dispatched a large team of scholars to Egypt
to study and record the country’s rich archaeological, natural,
historical, and living human heritage. These so-called savants
produced an extraordinary multivolume document called
Description de l’Egypte. They began the science of Egyptology,
which has since brought so much of Egypt’s rich archaeologi-
cal past to life.