The Papyrus Museum of the Austrian National Library will host a special exhibition titled "The Power of Words. Rule and Cultural Diversity in Ancient Egypt" from June 12, 2025, to May 3, 2026. The exhibition will feature over 90 exhibits, showcasing the various languages spoken and written in Egypt from approximately 1500 BC to 1000 AD.
Original writings on papyrus, parchment, and paper will illuminate the different linguistic traditions throughout historical and societal changes. The exhibition will reveal how different languages overlapped and coexisted simultaneously. It will also highlight the cultural-historical phenomenon of how a country maintained a language of governance and a vernacular language in parallel for centuries.
The exhibition also aims to draw parallels to the present day. Multi-ethnic and multilingual societies are not new; they have existed in various forms across many eras and regions. Diversity, the encounter of different linguistic and cultural traditions, and tolerant dialogue are highly relevant themes. The selection of exhibits illustrates the convergence of different language and cultural circles in ancient Egypt, based on the extensive records from the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and early Arab periods.
The linguistic landscape of Egypt has always been multifaceted. The meeting of different language and cultural circles led to multilingualism widely defining everyday life. A portion of the population moved simultaneously within two linguistic traditions and cultural identities. Numerous bilingual texts illustrate how the encounter of different language and cultural circles created new social realities, and large segments of the population operated multilingually.
Letters from rulers, petitions, legal documents, and letters show how a society over the ages dealt with the fact that the language of the rulers was not the same as that of the vast majority of the population. The documents shown and explained in the new special exhibition document how communication between rulers and the ruled has evolved over time and across language barriers.
The exhibition will be curated by Dr. Bernhard Palme and Dr. Angelika Zdiarsky.