This interest in Classical sites rapidly widened to include the Biblical sites of the Middle East and Egypt. The latter was particularly influential because of the tremendous interest in all things Egyptian that was generated by the 1798-1801 military campaigns of Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon was accompanied by scholars and artists and this led to a fascination within France, and Europe more generally, of the archaeological sites. Baron Vivant Denon published an account of the campaign in 1802 ‘Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte‘, and the multivolume Déscription de l'Égypte based on the research of the scholars who accompanied Napoleon was published between 1809 and 1822. The culmination of years of study was in 1822 when Jean-François Champollion deciphered the Rosetta Stone allowing hieroglyphics to be translated for the first time. When photography was announced in France in 1839 it meant that albums and single prints of the locations could be placed before an already intrigued public and enterprising photographers immediately saw the commercial opportunities. There were a large number of early travel photographers to the Middle East but some of the most notable include:

• Pierre-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière (1798-1865) was in Paris on 1839 when the daguerrotype process was announced and he purchased all the necessary equipment. He photographed in Greece, Egypt and Jerusalem and his daguerreotypes were published in the book "Excursions Daguerriennes, Vues et Monuments les Plus Remarquables du Globe" which was published 1841-42.
• Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804-1892) took around one thousand Daguerreotypes as he travelled to Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Damascus and Cairo between 1842 and 1845. In 1846 illustrations from his photographs were published in Paris as "Monuments Arabes d'Egyptes de Syrie et d'Asie Mineure, Dessines et Mesures de 1842 a 1845" (Arabic monuments from Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor, drawings and measures from 1842 to 1845).
• Maxime Du Camp (1822-1894) travelled with the French novelist Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) to Egypt in 1849. The photographs he took were published in installments starting in September 1851 in his book "Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie". The 125 photographs needed for each book were copied at the Lille photographic printing works of Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Evrard.

• Félix Teynard (1817-1892) was a French civil engineer from Grenoble who went up the Nile to record the archaeological monuments between 1851 and 1852. His style is intriguing because of his engineering background shows itself when he concentrates on the details of the sites themselves rather than their settings within the landscape. He returned with 160 calotypes and these were published in "Egypte et Nubia. Sites et monuments les plus intéressants pour l'étude de l-art et de histoire. Atlas photographié".
• Francis Frith (1822-1898) an Englishman whose interest in photography began in 1850 and was encouraged by his three photographic expeditions to the Eastern Mediterranean (1854-1860). Between 1858-1860 J.S. Virtue published his photographs in a two volume work "Egypt and Palestine" issued in 25 parts and it included 76 albumen prints that were stuck to the pages. He went on to publish several other works containing tipped in prints of his travels in the Middle East and he used his prints to illustrate two editions of the Holy Bible (1860 - E. Eyre & W. Spottiswoode, 1862-1863 - Glasgow: W. Mackenzie).
• Gustave Le Gray (1820- circa 1882) escaped his financial problems and his family by leaving France with the novelist Alexandre Dumas on the yacht Emma in May 1860. He had already demonstrated his photographic skills and his seascapes (including Brig upon the Water 1856 and The Large Wave, Sète 1857) had been much praised. After splitting with Dumas in Sicily he went on to Egypt where from 1869 he taught at the Ecole Polytechnique of the viceroy in Cairo.

• Felice Beato (circa 1825 - circa 1908) From 1853 onwards he traveled widely in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Later he photographed war scenes in the Crimea and the Opium Wars in China. His most outstanding body of work comes from his lengthy stays in Japan from 1862 onwards.
• Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900) was a British astronomer and amateur photographer who travelled to Russia and Egypt. A wonderful set of glass lantern slides of Egypt from the Australian Inland Mission Collection is preserved at the National Library Of Australia.

• Auguste Salzmann (1824-1872) Known for his work in the Middle East between 1854 and 1865. In 1856 his book Jérusalem, étude et réproduction photographique de la Ville Sainte was published with the photographs printed by Blanquart-Evrard.
• John Beasley Greene (1832-1856) traveled to Egypt, Syria and Palestine in 1853 and published a volume entitled "Le Nil" in 1854 with his photographs printed by Blanquart-Evrard. He followed this with subsequent photographic trips in the 1850's to Egypt and Algeria.

There were a vast number of photographers who visited the Middle East or were resident there during the nineteeth century. Amongst these the French painter Felix Bonfils (1829-1885) was in Beirut, the Turkish photographer Pascal Sebah (1823-1886) and Francis Bedford (1816-1894) all produced large bodies of work. The expanding tourist trade and the growth of Oriental influences in art provided an expanding market for photographic prints, albums and illustrated books as souvenirs.