Online Exhibition Catalogue: Connections: Communication in Ancient Egypt

Connections: Communication in Ancient Egypt

Introduction

Since the very beginning of human evolution, communication has played a crucial role in social development. In our modern world, when messages are conveyed through countless routes, it is very appropriate to look back and understand how interaction influenced past societies.

‘Connections’ aims to explore the ways in which the ancient Egyptians communicated between each other and those in a wider international environment. The methods they used are not far removed from our own, using various verbal and non-verbal techniques. Contributions to this study include investigations of written communication, along with interaction through material culture, gestures and much more. ‘Connections’ hopes to provide a unique insight into the ways that the Egyptians communed with the deceased, the illiterate, the divine and sacred worlds, foreign countries and different social groups. 

An online catalogue accompanies a physical exhibition taken from objects loaned to the University of Birmingham from the Eton College Joseph William Myers Collection of Egyptian antiquities. These objects are among the finest items of Egyptian art to have been collected during the late nineteenth century. Many of them are small masterpieces in their own right – but those less aesthetic objects also communicated messages, and have not been neglected in this project...

Essays

• Innovation through Interactions: A tale of three ‘pilgrim flasks', by Dr Carla Gallorini
• ‘Actions speak louder than words’: Gestures of Communication in Ancient Egypt, by Emily Millward
• Communication Through Music in Ancient Egyptian Religion, by Eleanor Simmance
• Petitions to the Divine: Communication through Votive Offerings at Egyptian Shrines, by Gabrielle Heffernan
• Intercultural Communication: Egypt and Nubia c. 2543-1076BC, by Carl Graves
• Blue Faience Bowls and Social Practice: New light on their use and function, by Dr Martin Bommas
• Writing - Image - Material: On Media and Communication in Ancient Egypt, by Dr Michela Luiselli
• The Lost Art of Egyptian Lithics, by Meagan Mangum
• Scarabs: Appeals for Protection and Resurrection, by Dr Nicola J Adderley
• Visualizing Ideology: the message of the crowned-falcon amulets, by Steven R. W. Gregory
• The Dead and the Living Interacting Through Text: An Inscribed Funerary Cone, by Valentina Pasquali