Scientific research in Arabia began with the Danish expedition of 1761-1766. King Frederick V of Denmark sent out what we today would call a multidisciplinary team, composed of a philologist, a doctor of medicine, an artist, and a mathematician-astronomer named Carsten Niebuhr, the sole survivor of the expedition to 'Arabia Felix'. They stayed for several years, but they also visited Syria, Mesopotamia, even far away Persopolis and Bombay. Returning across the Indian Ocean, they stopped off at Jidda on the Red Sea before crossing over into Egypt. Niebuhr's account, published in Copenhagen in 1774-1778, and followed by a French translation published in Amsterdam in 1780, spurred further research on Arabia. Meanwhile, the mass of documentation he had gathered, along with the inscriptions he had copied during the course of his travels, especially while in Persopolis, laid the groundwork for deciphering cuneiform writing.

Among the voyagers inspired by Niebuhr, the Swiss, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784-1817) deserves special attention. Dressed in oriental garb as 'Sheik Ibrahim' he travelled for the British African Association, making several incursions into the heart of Arabia Felix and Arabia Petrea. He left England in 1809 for Malta, then went onwards to Antioch, Alep, Palmyra, Baalbeck and Damascus. Heading southwards, he arrived in Petra on 22 August 1812. As the region was far from safe, he would have to be brief, just the time to sketch an outline of a tomb façade. His next expedition took off from the south, travelling up the Nile from Cairo to Shaui, crossing the eastern desert to reach the Red Sea at Souakin, from there he sailed for Medina, then walked northwards for seven days to reach Madinat Saleh, formerly Hegra.

Burckhardt died in Cairo in 1817, but his account of Syria was published in English in 1822, and his work on Arabia was published in 1829. Burckhardt provided the first objective study of the life and customs of the desert Arabs, full of proverbs gleaned from his encounters with the desert tribes.

The splendours of Petra were made famous by two French explorers, Léon de Laborde (1807-1869) and Louis Linant de Bellefonds (1799-1883). Though young, they were already quite knowledgeable about the Middle East when they met in Cairo in 1828 and decided to set off on their expedition. In 1826, Léon and his father, Alexandre, had travelled from Smyrna to Constantinople, through Anatolia and northern Syria as far as Baalbeck and Damascus, over the Hawran plateau, on to Jerusalem, Jerash and Amman. However, Burckhardt's recently discovered Petra, remained inaccessible in this dangerous region. After his father had to return to France, Leon stayed on in the Middle East.

The other young man's experience began in 1817 with the scientific expedition headed by Count de Forbin to study Greece, the Holy Land and Egypt. Louis Linant de Bellefonds was chosen for this expedition for two reasons, he was an engineer and an excellent draftsman. Linant travelled up the Nile to Lower Nubia, visited the oasis at Siwa and later explored the Sinaï with the Italian Ricci. For a brief time he served as an engineer to Mohammed Ali, viceroy of Egypt. He was busy working on irrigation projects for Egypt when he met Léon de Laborde. In the same year, 1828, fulfilling his long cherished dream, Champollion arrived in Egypt, and met our two young travellers.

They decided to set out on an expedition for Petra with a full caravan and a heavy escort recruited from the various tribes met as they travelled along. First, there were Egyptians, then men from the Sinai, followed by the Alaouins who led them up to Petra where they stayed from 28 March till 3 April 1828. In Petra, they sketched furiously, sharing the work. While one drew a faÁade the other was busy copying inscriptions. They split the tasks up so that while one executed an overall view, the other drew detail views and three-quarter views. It seems that they were forced to leave Petra due to an outbreak of the plague in Wadi Moussa.

Each author had planned to publish separately, but Linant's travel notes never made it beyond manuscript form, engrossed as he was with his career plans. Of the 69 illustrations that Leon de Laborde had engraved by famous artists (such as Achille Devéria), only 14 of them were Linant's, the rest were from his own hand.

Their collaboration was so harmonious that it is quite difficult to distinguish who executed what. The book was sold in Paris from 1830 to 1833 on a subscription basis (i.e. prior to publication). And it sold very well indeed. Along with the high quality of their illustrations, the work was appreciated for Laborde's historically sound documentation of all known written sources. The book became an indispensable guide for travel to the Middle East. It inspired the Scotsman, David Roberts, who put together an album of lithographs executed in colour and in black, between 1842 and 1849. Having no scientific pretensions, but of great beauty, Roberts' work popularised views of Jerusalem, Tyr, Saida, Cairo, and the Sinai. His illustration of Petra, with its Khaznah was inspired by one of Laborde's drawings.

Several French authors set out on the foot steps of Laborde and Linant. One historian from the entourage of Napoléon III, Félicien de Saulcy (1807-1880) completed several scientific missions around the Dead Sea area during the period from 1845 to 1869. Aiming to better authenticate his observations, he hired the services of a young archaeologist, Auguste Salzmann (1824-1872), who produced a whole series of "calotypes", published after 1856.
De Saulcy was followed by Joseph d'Albert, Duke de Luynes, a numismatist and collector, who travelled around the Dead Sea in 1864. There was also the philologist, Melchior de Vogüe (1829-1916), who set out to collect basalt stones in the Safa Desert, and sent them back to the Louvre Museum. De Vogüe, along with Ernest Renan and Clermont-Ganneau (1846-1923), gave rise to French domination of the field of Semitic epigraphic research.