Short answers, pulled from the story.
Napoleon Bonaparte aimed to undermine British trade routes and sever Britain's connection to its colonial holdings in India. He hoped to ally with Tipu Sultan of Mysore and use Egypt as a base for a future expedition to India. The Directory formally authorized the 36,000-man expedition in March 1798 and appointed Bonaparte commander-in-chief of the Armee d'Orient.
On the 1st of August 1798, Admiral Horatio Nelson's British Mediterranean fleet found the French squadron anchored in Aboukir Bay near Alexandria and attacked that same night. The British exploited a gap in the French defensive line, firing from both sides; at around ten in the evening, the French flagship L'Orient exploded. Only two ships of the line and two frigates escaped destruction or capture.
Pierre-Francois Bouchard, a young French engineering officer, discovered the Rosetta Stone in July 1799. When General Menou surrendered to British forces in 1801, he signed the stone and all other Egyptian antiquities the French had collected over to the British under General John Hely-Hutchinson.
Napoleon besieged Acre beginning in March 1799 but failed to capture it after 63 days of campaigning. The Royal Navy had seized his heavy siege artillery, and British forces under Sidney Smith reinforced the city's defenses. Plague also spread through the French army during the siege, and Napoleon ultimately retreated to Egypt.
Napoleon's newspaper the Courrier de l'Egypte suppressed news of defeats at Aboukir Bay and in Syria throughout the campaign. He returned to France in the autumn of 1799 with his reputation largely intact. He then engineered the coup d'etat of 18 brumaire, making himself First Consul of France.
The Description de l'Egypte was a comprehensive scholarly publication issued on Napoleon's orders between 1809 and 1821. It documented the findings of 167 scientists and scholars who had accompanied the French expedition and established Egyptology as a discipline in Europe. The preceding 4-volume Memoires sur l'Egypte had appeared between 1798 and 1801, while the campaign itself was still under way.