Edme-François Jomard
French cartographer, engineer and archaeologist (1777–1862)

Edme-François Jomard (French: [ʒɔmaʁ]; 1777 – September 22, 1862) was a French cartographer, engineer, and archaeologist. He edited the Description de L'Égypte and was a member of the Institut d'Egypte established by Napoleon. He supervised the educational and cultural mission sent to France from Egypt by Muhammad Ali of Egypt. He was a pioneer in the area of History of Cartography.
Life
He was educated at the collège Mazarin, the École nationale des ponts et chaussées and the École polytechnique. He took part in Napoleon's commission to Egypt. In 1828 he was appointed as curator of the geographical collections of the Bibliothèque royale.
Description de l'Égypte
The publication of the landmark, outsized Description de l'Égypte (Description of Egypt) was decreed by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, and published between 1809 and 1892. This seminal publication on Egyptology was a collaboration effort of some 150 prominent French scientist and scholars and 2,000 technicians and artists, with Jomard as chief editor. It is the record of Bonaparte's Commission des Sciences et des Arts that accompanied the ill-fated French campaign in Egypt and Syria (1798-1801)."
Monuments de la géographie
Jomard's main task as curator at the Bibliothèque royale was to organize the existing collections and to develop the library's collection of contemporary maps.
“Edme-François Jomard” enters the record as french cartographer, engineer and archaeologist (1777–1862). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Edme-François, Jomard and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q240788. VIAF identifies the subject as 2511766. The Library of Congress control number is n85019509. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1777, 1862, 1828 and 1802.
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This entry incorporates text from “Edme-François Jomard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.