Cracking ancient codes: Understanding early writing

The Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London
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Event has ended
This event ended on Monday 24th of June 2019
Admission
£16 adult, £10 concessions, £7 members
Location

The Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London

Nearest Tube/Rail Stations
Green Park 0.22 miles

Writing is generally agreed to be among the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps the greatest invention, since it made history possible. It seems to have been invented in the late fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia in the form of wedge-shaped marks pressed into soft clay with a reed stylus: the script known as cuneiform. Very soon afterwards, ancient Egypt developed its own writing: the hieroglyphic script, immortalised in the Rosetta Stone kept in the British Museum, which consists of a single royal edict, dated 196 BC, written in the hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek alphabetic scripts. But although cuneiform and hieroglyphic can today be read by scholars, many of the early inscriptions remain mysterious.

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