Egyptology is the study of Ancient Egyptian civilization. It is generally extended to include the language and archaeology of the Copts, the Christian descendents of the ancient Egyptians. The initial impetus for developing the discipline was provided by Napoleon I's ill-fated invasion of Egypt in 1798, which opened the country to European collectors and scholars and led to the formation of important collections of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum, the Louvre, and the museums of Turin and Berlin. Napoleon was accompanied by a large body of savants whose function was to record Egypt's historical, cultural, and natural heritage. The results of their work were published in 20 massive folio volumes entitled Description de l'Egypte (Description of Egypt). A more important result of the invasion was the chance discovery of the Rosetta Stone, whose bilingual inscriptions in Greek and the ancient language of Egypt enabled Jean Francois Champollion to make (1822) the decisive breakthrough in the decipherment of the hieroglyphic script.
The two chief branches of Egyptology are the study of inscriptions and written documents and the study of archaeological evidence. During its life of more than 3,000 years, the language underwent substantial changes in grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, as well as in the number and character of the hieroglyphic signs used in writing it. Moreover, from a very early date (before 2650 BC), scribes, when writing in ink, often adopted a cursive hand, known as hieratic, which developed until it bore little resemblance to the hieroglyphic script. An even more cursive script, called demotic, evolved from hieratic in about the 7th century BC and continued as late as the fifth century AD.
Documents in these three scripts cover a wide variety of subjects, including religion, magic, practical wisdom, belles lettres, history, business, personal and legal matters, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy. Egyptologists of many nations have worked on these documents, publishing the texts with translations and commentaries, writing grammars, and compiling dictionaries. Many of the original documents are damaged or incomplete, so that interpretation presents considerable difficulties.
Archaeological investigation is no less varied in scope than linguistic studies and is just as important for understanding the nature and development of the Egyptian civilization. Among its many branches are scientific excavation, the classification and analysis of objects, technology, architecture, art history, and natural history. The number of monuments and the quantity of objects available for study are enormous, chiefly because of the long history and prehistory of the ancient Egyptians, the use from an early date of stone, the preservative effects of Egypt's dry climate, the rapid accumulation of wind-blown sand over edifices, and the burial of so much material of all kinds with the dead. Pictorial representations on the walls of temples and tombs shed invaluable light on ritual ceremonies, historical events, and human activities. Relatively few traces of habitations or settlements have survived, however, the most notable exceptions being the city of Akhenaten at Tell el-Amarna and the village, now called Deir el-Medinah, of the artists and craftsmen who constructed the tombs at Thebes.
In spite of all the progress made in the rediscovery of ancient Egypt, much still remains to be learned, even from further study of what has already been found. No one knows what still lies beneath the sand, but many sites, particularly in the Nile Delta, have not yet been systematically explored, and there is every reason to hope that they will yield new evidence to fill some of the gaps in present-day knowledge.