British Museum touring exhibition comes to Salisbury Museum

A British Museum touring exhibition, Writing for Eternity: Decoding Ancient Egypt, opens on Saturday.

Having toured first to Wrexham Museum and then to Tullie House in Carlisle, Salisbury Museum is the third venue to host the British Museum’s famous collection, which explores aspects of one of the world’s greatest ancient civilisations.

This exhibition tells the story of 4,000 years of writing, featuring a range of hieroglyph and cursive writing on a wide range of materials, such as stone, wood, papyrus, linen, parchment, pottery and metal.

Ilona Regulski, the British Museum’s curator of Egyptian Written Culture, said: “Ancient Egypt has produced an astonishing variety of written material representing indigenous as well as foreign languages.

"No other culture has yielded such a rich variety of inscribed objects and nowhere else have they been so well preserved.”

She said the exhibition presents the ancient hieroglyphs next to Coptic, Greek, Arabic and Nubian documents.

She added: “Familiar objects, such as papyrus and stone, alternate with surprising artefacts such as the scribe’s pen and pieces of jewellery.”

Louise Tunnard, of Salisbury Museum, said, “It is a privilege to feature another touring exhibition from the British Museum in our programme, having hosted the Lacock Cup here in 2014.

"This exhibition will be a family friendly experience, with visitors having the opportunity to try their hand at writing their own hieroglyphs.

"There will also be lots of hands-on activities for children and perhaps the chance to think about what life was like before the advent of texting.”

Drawing from its own photographic collection, Salisbury Museum will also include in the exhibition, wonderful images of a local family on tour in Egypt in the 1920s.