![]() ![]() Then there’s a length of mummy bandage of Aberuait, on loan from the Musée du Louvre and never seen in the UK before. It was actually the coffin of Hapmen, a nobleman of the 26th dynasty - it was thought on discovery that bathing in it could offer magical relief from the torments of love. Alongside statues, sarcophagi and a number of beautiful texts, from love poetry to tax returns, international treaties and shopping lists, highlights of the exhibition include the “Enchanted Basin” – a black granite sarcophagus from about 600 BCE, richly decorated with hieroglyphs and images of gods. The stone will sit alongside a host of exceptional loans, and treasures from the museum’s own collection. It tells the story of our slow road to understanding hieroglyphs, how two men pursued a (mostly) cordial rivalry over the course of a 20-year race to decipherment, and the vast wealth of invaluable information that the decoding – which happened thanks to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone – gave to the world. ![]() The latter, for future reference, is normally found in the Egyptian Sculpture gallery, though it’s usually impossible to see due to the mass of people crammed around its case, holding up their phones for a snap before moving on, one more world-famous artefact ticked off the list.įor the next five months or so, however, the Rosetta Stone will be the centrepiece of the museum’s new exhibition, Hieroglyphs: unlocking ancient Egypt, which celebrates the 200th anniversary (almost exactly) of the decoding of one of human history’s oldest written languages. The mummies, the toilets and the Rosetta Stone. ![]() Ask any of the staff members helpfully loitering around the entrance to the British Museum’s Great Court and they’ll tell you - there are three things that people ask for. ![]()
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