Sunday, January 26, 2020

"Emojis Meet Hieroglyphs: If King Tut Could Text"


Image and text borrowed from The New York Times, 1/22/20.

An Israel Museum exhibition explores the complicated relationship between the hieroglyphs of antiquity and emoji, the lingua franca of the digital age.

The sleek figures, kohl-rimmed eyes and offerings to the gods etched on ancient Egypt’s temples and tombs are enjoying a kind of graphic afterlife, reincarnated in the tears of joy, clinking beer mugs and burger emojis of digital messaging.

An exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, “Emoglyphs: Picture-Writing From Hieroglyphs to the Emoji,” highlights the seemingly obvious, but also complicated, relationship between the iconic communication system from antiquity and the lingua franca of the cyber age.

A visual and linguistic exercise in time travel, “Emoglyphs” juxtaposes the once indecipherable pictogram writing of ancient Egypt, which first developed about 5,000 years ago, with the more accessible and universal usage of pictograms that originated in Japan in the late 1990s.


Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/arts/design/emojis-hieroglyphs-israel-museum.html

Emoglyphs
Picture-Writing from Hieroglyphs to the Emoji
16 Dec 2019 - 12 Oct 2020
Curator: Shirly Ben-Dor Evian
Designer: Shirley Yahalomi
Davidson Temporary Exhibition Gallery, Archaeology Wing

Website: https://www.imj.org.il/en/exhibitions/emoglyphs

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