In the spring of 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte sails for Egypt with 38,000 soldiers, 10,000 sailors, and a corps of 167 scientists and scholars tasked with studying everything from ancient monuments to local wildlife. The film follows the campaign from the landing near Alexandria through the Battle of the Pyramids, tracing how a military invasion doubled as an attempt to catalog an entire civilization. It covers the naval disaster at Aboukir Bay, where Nelson's fleet destroys Napoleon's ships and strands his army, and the uneasy occupation of Cairo that follows. Historians and Egyptologists narrate the discoveries that came out of the expedition, including the Rosetta Stone, alongside the violence and resentment the occupation produced among Egyptians. Using period maps, paintings, and location footage from Alexandria and Cairo, the documentary treats the campaign as the opening act of a long, uneven encounter between European science and the Muslim world, one that produced both genuine scholarship and lasting colonial grievance.