Louvre Egypt wonders

This first floor is the perfect introduction to ancient Egypt. After seeing the civilization from so many points of view, we can begin to understand who these people were, what they cared about, and how they lived. And remember, if you ever have any questions, you can always ask your tour guide!

After this section, it is on to the second floor, which gives us a much deeper dive into the official history of Egypt. Here, the rooms are placed chronologically, going in-depth on the events that shaped each period. You will learn about the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, as well as the major players in these epochs.

Both of these floors put everything in the right context. Each room is designed to transport you fully to this different time and place. That added layer of detail makes you feel as if you’ve entered a portal from modern day Paris to somewhere along the banks of the Nile four thousand years ago!

One room is a fully reconstructed Egyptian temple, while another is a true-to-life house from the time, and still another is an actual Mastaba! These immersive experiences create memories that will last a lifetime.

The Louvre’s world-class museologists have crafted one of the finest museum experiences ever devised. One you can experience with our world class tour guide!

Many people wonder: why does the Louvre have such a great collection of Egyptian artifacts? Why is this museum the best place outside of Egypt to understand this ancient civilization?

To get answers to those questions, we need to go back centuries, even millennia. 

Europe itself has always looked to Egypt with wonder. The ancient Greeks and Romans were mesmerized by their architectural achievements. It’s important to remember that a Roman alive during the reign of Cleopatra was closer to us in time than the building of the Pyramids. So the way we look at the ancient Mediterranean, they were already looking at ancient Egypt!

During the Middle Ages, European pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land often traveled through Egypt. And with the Renaissance, this traffic became more and more focused on a secular desire to understand the history of this civilization.

But it is with Napoleon Bonaparte’s Discovery of Egypt that the modern era of this fascination begins. 

In 1798, French troops entered Egypt in an effort to fight off the British coalition with the Ottoman Empire. As part of this campaign, Napoleon sent teams of scientists to study and copy everything they could. While they wanted to carry away as many artifacts as they could, the British won over the French Naval fleet, and blocked the french infantry in Egypt, finding the famous Rosetta Stone in the hands of the French. The French had to cede all their findings. The British Army happily took the Rosetta Stone with them back to London to the British Museum where, it is today, where also Thomas Young (a Brittish savant who knew 12 languages) studied it and translated the first few words.

This single artifact led to a discovery that ignited an explosion in Egyptian studies.

The Rosetta Stone is an enormous stele (an ancient style of monument made out of a slab of stone) chiseled in 196 BCE. On its surface is a decree by a Greek-Egyptian king. Importantly, the decree is written in three languages: ancient Greek, hieroglyphs, and an Egyptian script called Demotic.

This proved a crucial find. Because at the time, the meaning of hieroglyphs had been lost. However, ancient Greek was still known. It was hoped that, by studying the content of the Rosetta Stone, humanity might once again read the beautiful hieroglyphs.

Scholars from Germany, Paris, London and Tuscany worked tirelessly to chase down their hunches and build off of each other’s ideas. It was Frenchmen Jean-Joseph and his brother Jean-François Champollion who finally deciphered the Rosetta Stone in 1822. 

A black-ink original copy of the famed Rosetta Stone secretly made its way to Paris city. We can still find this original copy today the National Library of France. Jean-Francois took a new look and applied a more traditional approach than his rival Thomas Young. Even though Champollion suffered from the many political turmoils of France, he never had access to the real Rosetta Stone, but he succeeded to decipher Hieroglyphs first and finally won the race.

Champollion was obsessed by Coptic, Ancient Greek, Hebrew and Arabic. He knew better than anyone the Egyptian history and culture at that time. He used to bathe in Oriental cultures, read thousands of books in Arabic, Hebrew and Coptic, attend religious ceremonies in a Coptic church in Paris. His true passion was the key to decipher the sounds and the meanings behind the Hieroglyphs but also lead to his fatigue.

The two brothers convinced the King Charles X to create and curate the Louvre’s first Egypt museum. The first Egyptian department inside the Louvre opened in 1827. It served as the perfect symbol for France’s Egyptomania — a living post-revolution King with a Republican professor creating a new palace to pay homage to a kingdom that lasted more than 3000 years.

It was important to Charles to emphasize this connection. After all, he was the first king to rule France since the Revolution. He needed all the historical precedent he could get. To put a bow on it, he even named the department after himself.