Object Description
Throughout the late 18th and 19th Centuries, as you know, it became fashionable for the most important of British society to embark on ‘The Grand Tour’, a journey of cultural enlightenment encompassing the important sights of the ancient capitals of classical Europe, the Near East, Egypt and The Holy Land. The ‘Tourists’ as they became known, often brought back items from places visited, some of the more extravagant & exotic pieces, such as this example, are rare surviving pieces.
The Egyptian hieroglyphic script was one of the writing systems used by ancient Egyptians to represent their language. Because of their pictorial elegance, Herodotus and other important Greeks believed that Egyptian hieroglyphs were something sacred, so they referred to them as ‘holy writing’. Thus, the word hieroglyph comes from the Greek hiero ‘holy’ and glypho ‘writing’. In the ancient Egyptian language, hieroglyphs were called medu netjer, ‘the Gods’ words…