Antoine Galland was a publisher and printer during the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 and First Empire

First French Empire

The First French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I of France...

. As a printer he joined the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, a body of technical experts (savants) sent to Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 in 1798 to aid the work of the French expeditionary force in its successful invasion. He was therefore in Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

 when the newly-discovered Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek...

 arrived in the city. With two other experts (Jean-Joseph Marcel

Jean-Joseph Marcel

Jean-Joseph Marcel was a French printer and engineer. He was also a savant who accompanied Napoleon's 1798 campaign in Egypt as a member of the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, a corps of 167 technical experts....

 and Nicolas-Jacques Conté

Nicolas-Jacques Conté

Nicolas-Jacques Conté was a French painter, balloonist, army officer, and inventor of the modern pencil.He was born at Saint-Céneri-près-Sées in Normandy, and distinguished himself for his mechanical genius which was of great avail to the French army in Egypt...

) he was called on to make lithographic copies from the stone. These copies, the first seen in Europe, were used by Silvestre de Sacy

Silvestre de Sacy

Antoine Isaac, Baron Silvestre de Sacy , was a French linguist and orientalist. His son, Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy, became a journalist.-Early life:...

 and Johan David Åkerblad

Johan David Åkerblad

Johan David Åkerblad was a Swedish diplomat and orientalist, a student of Silvestre de Sacy. Sacy's investigation of the Rosetta Stone did not give any result and Åkerblad took on his work in 1802 and managed to identify all proper names in the demotic text in just two months...

 in their early attempts to decipher the hieroglyphic

Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...

 and demotic scripts.

On his return to France Galland in 1804 published a two-volume memoir of the expedition.

Works

• Tableau de l'Égypte pendant le séjour de l'armée française. Paris: Galland, an XIII [1804]. 2 vols. Text of vol. 1 (Google Books)