Review of the Hieroglyphs exhibition

at the British Museum

The current hieroglyphs exhibition at the British Museum is a very rare opportunity to see the Rosetta Stone in the context of opening a window to the life, culture and language of ancient Egypt. What struck me as I was viewing it was the almost incomprehensible fact that several thousand years before the current era there was a thriving and advanced culture in Egypt. The deciphering of the hieroglyphs has been key to realising and understanding this.

Until the meaning of hieroglyphs was finally cracked by Champollion in the 19th century, the meaning of them was a mystery. The Rosetta Stone was, in effect, an ancient trilingual document that contained the same message in hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek. What Champollion did was to work out, from his knowledge of Demotic, ancient Greek, and Egyptian culture, what the hieroglyphs represented, and from there what they meant. He did this, in effect, by identifying the name of the king in the other languages – because that was always encircled using a device called a cartouche – and matching that with the encircled word in the hieroglyphs

The oval enclosure is known as a cartouche

What I had not appreciated before I visited this exhibition – although it seems quite obvious now – was that Champollion was building on a great deal of scholarship and testing hunches going back centuries.

Looking at the various artefacts and their accompanying explanations somehow made that scholarship, and the ancient Egyptian culture, seem real rather than remote.

Some of the photos taken at the exhibtion

The hieroglyphs themselves are fascinating, because they denote meaning through both ideographic and phonetic means. The former relates to what they look like, and the latter to how they sound. It doesn’t seem easy to come up with interactive activities at an exhibition in which everything is behind glass and under subdued lighting, but the curators have managed to do just that by inviting visitors to guess and then work out what the various symbols mean. After a while it starts to become, if not easy, at least not quite so difficult.

From an educational point of view there is much the exhibition has to offer. An obvious example would be the teaching of History, one of the aims of which is for pupils to¹:

know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and follies of mankind

Also, at Key Stage 2, pupils are required to cover:

the achievements of the earliest civilizations – an overview of where and when the first civilizations appeared and a depth study of one of the following: Ancient Sumer, The Indus Valley, Ancient Egypt, The Shang Dynasty of Ancient China

While ancient Egyptian is an unlikely candidate for learning a modern language, the Modern Languages Programme of Study recognises the potential value of studying it:

Pupils studying ancient languages may take part in simple oral exchanges, while discussion of what they read will be conducted in English. A linguistic foundation in ancient languages may support the study of modern languages at key stage 3.

As people are not too sure of how ancient Egyptian sounded (although the exhibition has a number of recordings of how it may have sounded), the “simple oral exchanges” may be somewhat ambitious. However, I do feel that attending Hieroglyphs will help pupils appreciate, if you will, the culture “behind” a language, and the development of language – and, incidentally, the development of writing.

I would also suggest that hieroglyphs would be useful in getting pupils to think logically and creatively in preparation for learning computer programming. I have used cryptic crosswords in my teaching because the misleading clues encourage pupils to not accept the obvious answer, to look at something in a different way. Chess can also be helpful (look out for a book review on that). So why not hieroglyphs? 

The British Museum has very engaging resources for schools at https://bit.ly/tfbmschool. Schools can arrange a visit on a designated school day – although at the time of writing there is only one left, on 31st January, and you have to book in advance. As those restrictions make a visit unlikely now, all is not lost because the aforementioned resources are excellent in terms of their detail – though you will probably have to make changes in order to render them “accessible”. 

Also, do buy the accompanying book. It’s not inexpensive, but well worth the money, containing as it does lavish and copious illustrations, and full explanations.

Also, do listen to the In Our Time episode in which the Rosetta Stone is discussed: https://bit.ly/tfrosetta

The exhibition closes on 19th February 2023. What with half-term coming up it may prove difficult to organise a school visit at this stage, so I think it’s worth encouraging pupils to go and see it for themselves if they have the opportunity and the money. You might even drop an email to parents about it or put a note about it in your newsletter for parents, if you have one.

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1. The references to curricular pertain to the English National Curriculum.