Well I knew THAT, at least XD
Wikipedia says the french colonized Egypt for 3 years, so the documents may have been written as a result of that occupation. It may sound like a stretch, but these excerpts from wikipedia about the expedition make it sound a lot more likely:
"An unusual aspect of the Egyptian expedition was the inclusion of an enormous contingent of scientists and scholars ("savants") assigned to the invading French force, 167 in total."
"The Egyptian Institute that Napoleon established saw the construction of laboratories, libraries, and a printing press. The group worked prodigiously, and some of their discoveries were not finally cataloged until the 1820s.
A young engineering officer, Pierre-François-Xavier Bouchard, discovered the Rosetta Stone in July 1799. However, many of the antiquities collected by the French in Egypt were seized by the British Navy and ended up in the British Museum – only about 50 of the 5,000 Egyptian objects in the Louvre were collected during the 1799–1801 Egyptian expedition. Even so, the scholars' research in Egypt gave rise to the Description de l'Égypte, published on Napoleon's orders between 1809 and 1821.
Napoleon's discoveries in Egypt gave rise to fascination with Ancient Egyptian culture and the birth of Egyptology in Europe."
The excerpt makes it sound likely, but I'm detecting some sort of bias towards French patriotism - given that the page describes France as "collecting" the antiques, as if the French colonialists politely took these antiques from the Egyptian people, as opposed to the British who "seized".
I'm just concerned the reader might be overstating France's influence here ^^.[/QUOTE]