 Forbin boarded the frigate "Cléopâtra" for an expedition to the Levant to purchase Greek and Roman works of art.The company, which departed from Toulon 22 August 1817, was composed of Forbin, his cousin, abbé Charles-Marie-Auguste-Joseph de Forbin-Janson, later Bishop of Nancy, the architect Jean-Nicolas Huyot, the painter Pierre Prévost, later known for his landscape panoramas, and a young painter, Cochereau, Prévost's nephew, who was taken on to provide architectural drawings and renditions of sites, but succumbed before the expedition reached Athens; almost unnoticed was a young man who swiftly took Cochereau's place, Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds, destined for a career in Egypt.The party visited Melos, where Huyot had the misfortune to break his leg and could not join the company at Athens, Constantinople, Smyrna, Ephesus, Acre, Syria, Caesarea, Ascalon on the coast of Palestine, with a side trip to Jerusalem the Dead Sea and the River Jordan, and finally Egypt.