The emoji of ancient Egypt: exhibition on hieroglyphics at Israeli museum brings history up to date
- A show at an Israeli museum is using modern emoji to explain the importance of hieroglyphics used in ancient Egypt
- The purple-suited dancer emoji, for instance, strikes a similar pose to an Egyptian in a loin cloth from 3,000 years ago
How does an academic explain the importance of ancient hieroglyphics to modern audiences glued to their phones? Through the cunning use of emoji.
The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, has just opened the “Emoglyphs” exhibition, comparing the pictograms of antiquity to those of today.
“I usually find it very hard to explain how hieroglyphs are used as a script,” says the show’s curator, Shirly Ben-Dor Evian.
“Then it occurred to me that some of the things can now be explained more easily because we are all writing with pictures now – it has become very widespread.”
From the heart symbol to little monkeys and foaming glasses of beer, the pictograms of our own time have enlivened discussion on social media and online messaging since the late 1990s.