In the wake of Facebook announcing 1,500 new emojis, the Royal Cornwall Museum has decided to bridge the historical emoji gap with their own series of Ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian-themed emojis.

Emojis have their own particular history, says the musem. They started in the late 90s in Japan when people were increasingly using picture messages as a way to communicate. Mobile phone companies noticed this trend and because they were struggling to support the needs of 80 million users, engineers were told to fix the problem and the emoji was born.

Ian Wall, Director of the Royal Cornwall Museum says: ’Emojis are responsible for changing the way we express ourselves through text. However emojis aren’t really a new phenomenon. History is full of examples of pictorially-led languages, from the hieroglyphics used by the Ancient Egyptians to the Aztecs’ language of Nahuatl. In fact we have an entire area of the museum dedicated to ancient languages which people can come and enjoy.’