Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
There’s a good chance you know a fact or two about the artefact called the Rosetta Stone – namely that, because it was inscribed with a single message written in three different scripts, its discovery allowed archeologists to decode ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Or you might have heard that the new Grand Egyptian Museum has been calling for the artefact to be returned to its homeland. However, you may not know some of the most basics facts about the object. For instance, what was its purpose, and what did it actually say? In this video, Ilona Regulski, curator of Egyptian written culture at the British Museum in London, walks viewers through the stone and its ‘decree’, issued during the Ptolemaic dynasty in 196 BCE. In doing so, she reveals how this ancient stele, first unearthed in 1799, was just the first of many copies that have been found throughout Egypt, and what its message can tell us about the transitional period in which it was written. The video supports the exhibition ‘Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt’, which runs at the British Museum through to February 2023.
Video by the British Museum
video
Design and fashion
The mundane becomes mesmerising in this deep dive into segmented displays
14 minutes
video
Architecture
Tour the European architecture that dreamed of a wondrous, fictitious China
16 minutes
video
Spirituality
Trek alongside spiritual pilgrims on a treacherous journey across Pakistan
6 minutes
video
Thinkers and theories
Photographs offer a colonialist window to the past – one that must be challenged
14 minutes
video
Animals and humans
An artist and ants collaborate on an exhibit of ‘tiny Abstract Expressionist paintings’
5 minutes
video
Mathematics
How a curious question about colouring maps changed mathematics forever
9 minutes
video
Cities
The rise and fall of Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong’s infamous urban monolith
18 minutes
video
Gender
When aggression is viewed as brilliance, it hurts women in science, and science itself
5 minutes
video
Religion
From God’s shoes to satellites in heaven – children weigh in on religion
8 minutes