Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Description de l'Egypte is a multi-volume French publication that aimed to catalog all known aspects of ancient and modern Egypt, along with its natural history. The first volume appeared in 1809 and the final volume in 1829. At the time of its release it was the largest published work in the world.
Approximately 160 civilian scholars and scientists known as the savants worked on the Description de l'Egypte, accompanied by around 2,000 artists and technicians, including 400 engravers. Many of the savants were drawn from the Institut de France and accompanied Napoleon's expedition to Egypt from 1798 to 1801.
The standard first edition of the Description de l'Egypte contains 23 volumes, made up of nine text volumes, one volume describing the plates, ten volumes of plates, and three oversized Mammutfolio volumes. Variants exist; a copy presented to Bernardino Drovetti ran to 29 volumes.
The Carte de l'Egypte is the cartographic section of the Description de l'Egypte, containing approximately 50 map plates. It was the first triangulation-based map of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine ever produced and served as the basis for most maps of the region throughout much of the nineteenth century. It was later used in planning the canal through the Isthmus of Suez.
No. Reports that the original manuscript was destroyed in the fire at the Institut d'Egypte on the 17th of December 2011 were incorrect. A set of the 23-volume first print edition inside the building was saved without irreparable damage, and Egypt's minister of culture confirmed that at least two more complete sets remained in Egypt. The original manuscript material resides in Paris at France's National Archives and National Library.
In his 1978 book Orientalism, Edward Said described the Description de l'Egypte as "that great collective appropriation of one country by another." He characterized the enormous series as an act of cultural and political domination rather than purely scientific inquiry.