Days of Writing in Ampus

24, 25 and 26 April 2026

Three days of conferences, workshops, meetings, discoveries and discussions centred on world writing, in the heart of the village of Ampus.

The Ampus Writing Days, organised by the MusEc and the Friends of the MusEc association, invite the public to explore the richness of writing through three main themes: writing and water; hidden writing; and writing and play.

Over three days, researchers, artists and cultural mediators will present a programme combining a symposium, participatory workshops, lectures and informal gatherings, with the aim of fostering dialogue between knowledge, practices and imagination on the subject of writing traditions from around the world.

INTRODUCTION

Pre-opening Conference

The topics chosen for the Musec ‘pre-opening’ conference (24–26 April 2026) aim to reflect the museum’s collection and showcase the diversity of writing systems across the globe, whilst highlighting some of their essential functions. Thus, whatever their history, all writing systems share the common feature of contributing to a fundamental process: the creation of a representation of the world that is essential to the construction and life of any society. Yet certain recent forms of writing (digital writing, algorithms and AI) are causing concern. But are they really so different from those that preceded them? Looking back over this long history is essential to understanding them better and mastering them. The following themes will be addressed:

Writing and water

Hidden writing

Writing and play

The detailed programme per day

Friday 24 April, ‘Salle Maurice Michel (Ampus)’

Writing and Water

The first part of the programme will focus on the links between writing, memory and the spread of knowledge.

In Ampus, water has shaped the landscape for centuries through trenches, canals and pipes, tracing veritable lines of writing across the land.
From the earliest Mesopotamian clay tablets to paper and ink, water remains an essential element in the materials used for writing and its media.

Ampus is home to an exceptional aquatic heritage. Trenches, canals and water pipes criss-cross the municipality’s territory, tracing lines across it like writing. The comparison is neither coincidental nor merely metaphorical, for it has long been recognised that there is no landscape that has not, over the centuries, been profoundly altered by human activity. Every landscape has been marked, drawn upon – that is to say, written upon – if we adhere to the most obvious and fundamental definition of writing, which, above all else, makes it a mark, a trace, a drawing. So much so that the concept of ‘ecological writing’ is now part of the vocabulary of environmental science. Let us also recall that the widespread adoption of the very first form of writing, in Mesopotamia, was only possible thanks to the mixture of water and clay, necessary for the production of tablets whose softness and malleability made it much easier for the writer to mark their surface with a reed stylus. Water subsequently remained an indispensable element in the production of many other types of writing. It was used, in fact, to produce papyrus and paper, to treat hides to make parchment, and to produce inks of all kinds. In its purest form, it also makes ephemeral writing possible – words traced and inscribed on any surface, be it paper, sand, earth or stone, yet visible for only a few moments. In doing so, it encourages us to attach particular significance to the act of writing and the intention behind it, of which only the memory endures.

In Mesopotamia, writing developed thanks to clay tablets mixed with water. In mythology, water also symbolises the origin and the end of all things, and thus time. By enabling words and events to be recorded, writing therefore becomes a means of mastering time and determining destiny.

It has long been noted that the widespread adoption of writing in Mesopotamia, some five thousand years ago, was due to clay mixed with water. Water, moreover, lies at the heart of Mesopotamian religious beliefs. According to Mesopotamian mythology, it determines the existence of every being and every thing, for it marks its extremes: its emergence and its passing. It is with water that everything begins and everything ends (the floods): water is the metaphor or visual expression of time. Yet this is indeed one of the essential functions of writing: to master time (scripta manent, as the saying goes) and the possibility of fixing a fate, that is to say, that to which every being is destined. This is what the myths repeat time and again. For them, destiny, the ME (in Sumerian), exists only because it is written. From a simple practical convenience, water, because it can mix with clay, becomes, through writing, the mastery of time and governs the course of all existence.

This presentation explores the link between water and writing in Arab culture. Symbolising both life and eradication, water becomes a metaphor for creation, destiny and memory, whilst calligraphy and poetry express this relationship through forms and images inspired by the movement of water.

This paper explores the profound connection between water and writing in Arab culture, from the Qur’anic tradition to poetry and calligraphy. Water, a symbol of life and dissolution, serves both as a medium for writing and as a means of erasing it, whilst the act of writing becomes a metaphor for creation, destiny and human memory. Religious, legal and literary texts highlight this tension between permanence and impermanence, which extends into Arabic poetry, song and calligraphy, in which letters take on fluid forms evoking the flow of water. Through exegetical and poetic examples, this paper demonstrates how water and writing embody two principles of creation: one material, giving life to nature, the other immaterial, generating meaning and knowledge.

Saturday 25 April, ‘Salle Maurice Michel (Ampus)’

Secret writing

A day bringing together researchers, scientists, the general public and children for hands-on workshops, calligraphy sessions and experiments.

- Chinese calligraphy (Barnum): from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm
- Arabic calligraphy (Barnum): 10.00 am; 2.00 pm and 3.30 pm
- Latin calligraphy (Barnum): 10.30 am; 2.30 pm; 3.30 pm
- Children’s workshop “Invisible Writing” (Dr Chilli’s Office): 2.30 pm; 4.30 pm
- Mediarchéo workshop (Dr Chilli’s office): 10.30 am; 11.30 am and 3.30 pm
-Malo Patron participatory workshop (Lavoir): from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm
- Writing workshop (Barnum): from 10.30 am to 12.00 am and from 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm
- CNLI stand (conference room): Open from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm

Whilst writing serves to communicate, it also organises what must remain secret: encrypted texts, invisible inscriptions, messages reserved for certain readers.
Across cultures and eras, it contributes to the social, political and symbolic structuring of societies.

Writing enables communication. Yet it has often given rise to a paradox: the shift from the desire to produce a text that is normally meant to be seen, read and interpreted, to the desire to conceal it. Consider diaries, hidden letters (sometimes stolen), encrypted texts (for diplomatic or military reasons), inscriptions carved on the unseen parts of monuments, or even digital writings that are never seen by anyone other than those who produce them. In fact, all societies have organised the sharing and circulation of texts, thereby defining who could have access to information and how. As a consequence, writing became, from the moment of its first appearance, one of the particularly effective instruments of political and social structuring, as well as of the ideological ideas that were supposed to justify it.
To illustrate how this works, various objects from the collection will be discussed during the conference: the Mandaean scroll, bearing an inscription hidden within the folds of two sheets of lead and intended to offer protection against evil spirits; the Chinese Nushu script, embroidered onto handkerchiefs or fans for use by women; writings encrypted through digital means; palimpsests; and writings that are concealed by being eaten (in the form of a cake, for example) in order to harness the power of the message they convey.

This presentation demonstrates how living organisms communicate with one another via specific molecules, enabling the establishment and functioning of symbiotic relationships.

Symbiosis lies at the heart of the evolution of life. The establishment and subsequent functioning of a symbiotic relationship require precise communication between the two partners. Using this example, this short paper will attempt to show how living organisms have developed a means of communicating between different life forms through a wide range of molecules.

Taking as his starting point the mathematician A. Turing’s statement that ‘Mechanism and writing are almost synonymous’. Computer writing appears to have at least three distinctive features that set it apart from all other forms of writing: its function is not to capture something from a spoken language, it involves levels of compilation, and it operates automatically. These three features are counterintuitive and need to be illustrated with examples.

In this soon-to-be museum dedicated to writing, let us ask ourselves: what if medicine were, above all, the art of reading and writing the body?

Imagine an ancient, worn manuscript: some letters are fading, others have been crossed out, sometimes forgotten; some pages are missing, and every day new marks are added. In their surgeries, doctors are faced with a text that is just as fluid: the patient. These inscriptions on and within the body, as well as in the mind, are signs which, like a palimpsest, accumulate, conceal, overlap and reveal themselves. It is a living, shifting, ephemeral script that the doctor must decipher in order to write something in turn: a prescription. However, this writing, like any other, currently seems to be passing from the hands of the practitioner to machine algorithms (AI, diagnostic aids, amongst others). This shift will be examined, shedding striking light on the essential functions of writing.

Since ancient times, many cultures have practised glyphophagy – the act of consuming written characters in order to absorb their symbolic power. In medieval monasteries, monks and nuns lived on bread and the word of God, whilst in ancient Egypt, people ate clay cakes inscribed with magical spells to ward off evil spirits. We shall see that such practices are also recorded in Islamic cultures, as well as in the Far East, in Japan and China, and that this custom extends far beyond the religious sphere everywhere. It continues to this day and in all corners of the world, a radical expression of the bond that man maintains with the supernatural.

The earliest evidence of writing in India appears to confirm the importance of oral transmission, which ensured the dissemination of the Vedic hymns from their origins around the 2nd millennium BC to the present day. Writing emerged slowly and is, moreover, largely associated with the initiative of a single individual: Emperor Aśoka. Reigning between 268 and 232 BCE, he was not necessarily the originator of the first form of writing in India, but he was certainly responsible for a particular use of it. The earliest texts are carved at strategic points throughout his empire. Some are highly visible, whilst others, situated in hard-to-reach places—deep within caves, sometimes at great heights—are concealed from the general public. We propose to examine the purpose of these hidden inscriptions, which oscillate between visibility and secrecy.

An amulet from the Musec in Ampus, consisting of rolled-up strips of lead, has been virtually unrolled using X-ray tomography. The text, written in Mandaic, contains magical formulas intended to protect a woman, particularly against infertility and the hazards of pregnancy, as well as her son.

Among the acquisitions of the MUSEC in Ampus is an amulet consisting of two strips rolled up on themselves, which are too fragile to be physically unrolled. To avoid damaging the object and the text, which is finely engraved on both sides of the strips, the scroll was virtually unrolled using synchrotron X-ray tomography. X-ray fluorescence measurements established that the scroll was made of lead, housed within a copper container. An innovative data acquisition and processing technique was used to obtain legible images.
Once the images were obtained, the contents of the fragments could be deciphered and transcribed. The text is written in Aramaic, in a dialect originating from southern Mesopotamia: Mandaic. The text contains magical inscriptions, spanning a total of 140 lines, of which 135 have are preserved. One of the two tablets contains magical formulas for the protection of women, whilst the second is intended for her son. The content of these amulets is rather unusual: one of them consists mainly of spells against infertility and complications that may arise during pregnancy and childbirth. Among the demons capable of harming the mother and the foetus, one figure recurs several times: Yazdanduk, the Lilith. On the second tablet, spells call for the healing and protection of its patron.

* A food truck will be on site throughout the day.

Sunday 26 April, ‘Salle Maurice Michel (Ampus)’

Writing and Play

The final day of the conference, focusing on the playful aspects of writing.

All writing traditions have developed playful forms of expression: calligraphy, calligrams, word puzzles and typographical games that explore shapes, symbols and layout.
These practices reveal the creative, conventional and deeply imaginative nature of writing, which has the power to expand our representations of the world

Alongside the game of hide-and-seek from the previous theme, there are others that are lighter but no less constant: shifting signs, variations in scale, color, shape, style, or the density of a layout, etc. These possibilities spontaneously stimulate the imagination of those preparing to write and naturally trigger the pleasure of creating, enhanced by the satisfaction of mastering the craft..
Among the myriad of possible forms of play—such as calligraphy, calligrams, anagrams and palindromes (which can be read both ways, e.g. amor-roma), paralipomenon (the juxtaposition of texts of different kinds within a single document) and typographical experimentation, this conference will focus on calligraphy and forms of writing in which texts take the form of images, particularly pictograms in the Far East (China and Japan) and the Middle East (Mesopotamia and Egypt).
Whilst a creative dynamism manifests itself so powerfully across all cultures through these wordplay forms, we must still account for what makes them possible and which reveals one of the essential, and therefore indispensable, features of writing: the entirely conventional and arbitrary nature of the relationship established between two domains of radically different nature: namely the visual and concrete nature of written signs and the highly abstract nature of the thoughts conveyed by that writing. However, the arbitrariness of one convention establishes, by definition, the possibility of a completely different convention. All arbitrary elements are ipso facto interchangeable. This is demotrated by all writing games. It is also why writing is not merely, as it is regularly described, the rendering of a reality external to it; it is one representation of it, among other possibilities, a fiction, but one that is practically the only reality we face: our world.

Chinese writing possesses characteristics unique to itself. Image and meaning intertwine, expanding the possibilities for graphic play through the flexibility of characters, the strength of strokes, and the effects of form.

Long the preserve of Taoists, who used these variations to create esoteric messages, calligraphic variations gradually found their way into the world of scholars and then into society at large, with implications for diplomacy, art and culture. The advent of digital technology fuelled this creativity further, bringing movement and a more striking visual impact.

Images in writing (moji-e) are particularly striking examples of the intertwining of writing and drawing in Japan.

These unpretentious drawings generally depict small figures, created using the characters that make up their names. Although they were very popular during the Edo period (1603–1868), they are not always easy to decipher. Interpreting them requires not only reading and observational skills, but also the ability to outwit the traps set by the artists: what appears to be merely a line turns out to be a character, and what seems to refer to one word actually corresponds to another… Frustration, disappointment, jubilation, resignation—the reader thus passes through all stages of a ceaselessly renewed quest, to their great delight.

ACCESSIBILITY

An event open to all

These days are designed as an opportunity to share science, creativity and knowledge, and are open to history enthusiasts, curious minds, families and lovers of writing in all its forms.

PLANNING YOUR VISIT

Practical information

Date

24, 25 and 26 April 2026

Venues

Ampus and Draguignan (Var)

Access

Events open to all

Catering

Food truck on site, Saturday 25 April only

Registration available online on the Musec website.

VISION & ETHICS

The MusEc’s scientific policy

One of the key aims of the Musec’s policy is to highlight the full complexity and rich diversity of the subject of writing. To achieve this, it is essential to challenge a set of ideas deeply ingrained in people’s minds, particularly the notion that writing is merely a duplicate of speech. The study of writing systems, and particularly the oldest ones, irrespective of the cultural regions from which they emerged, teaches us, that language is by no means the origin of writing, nor its reflection, but that both share a number of functions which constitute the inseparably intertwined components of a single process that could be called either ‘language/writing’ or ‘writing/language’. Indeed, any linguistic utterance necessarily presupposes the prior inscription of its code and its rules of operation in the mind and, concretely, in its neural substrate (the brain), which is the place of their elaboration and shaping: their crucible. There is therefore no language without writing, and no writing without reading or interpretation, which is very generally shaped by the words of the language. Otherwise, why write?It is now more than ever necessary to revisit the fundamentals of writing in order to reflect upon and understand the current practices enabled by new technologies, such as algorithm-generated digital writing, which sometimes seems to be beyond our control. The fact that digital writing can encode any other form of writing serves as a reminder, if one were needed, that despite the extreme diversity of its manifestations, writing remains, in each of its forms, a universal symbolic equivalent. Whether through Eastern ideograms or alphabets of all kinds, each of these systems is indeed capable of conveying all forms of thought and all types of text, from the most descriptive to the most theoretical.