PARIS — French technicians have successfully downloaded the cockpit voice recordings from the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea in May, investigators said Saturday, raising hopes that the information the recordings contain will soon put an end to the intense speculation about what caused the disaster.

The recordings, along with the contents of the jet’s flight data recorder that were salvaged in a laboratory near Paris this past week, will be returned to Cairo for further analysis, an Egyptian-led crash investigation committee said in a statement.

The initial information obtained from the flight data recorder is consistent with automated alerts sent by the doomed plane, an Airbus A320, to a maintenance base on the ground indicating smoke in a lavatory as well as in an area near the cockpit where its flight control computer systems were housed. In addition, deepwater salvage teams have retrieved charred pieces of metal from the plane’s front section that investigators said indicated a high-temperature fire.

EgyptAir Flight 804 disappeared abruptly from radar at 37,000 feet and then plunged into the sea on May 19 on a flight from Paris to Cairo, killing all 66 passengers and crew members on board. The Egyptian authorities initially suspected terrorism as a likely cause, although no group has claimed responsibility.