![]() He could translate the Greek, and his knowledge of Coptic enabled him to equate each name in the Greek text with a cartouche (a small group of hieroglyphs enclosed in an oval ring) on the stone and to work out a true decipherment. Jean-François Champollion, who "cracked" the code of Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1823, was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with the Rosetta Stone, which presented a text in three languages: Egyptian hieroglyphic, Egyptian demotic and Greek. ![]() Although the decipherers were indebted to earlier researchers, they often were investigating against the received wisdom of their time. Robinson shows successful decipherments to have been breakthroughs in a process of mistakes, false starts and genuine insights. In Lost Languages, he explains the principles of three famous decipherments and applies the insights gained to an understanding of several undeciphered scripts-Linear A, the Etruscan alphabet, the Phaistos disc, and the Meroitic, Proto-Elamite, rongorongo, Zapotec, Isthmian and Indus scripts. ![]() $34.95.Īs longtime literary editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement in London, Andrew Robinson is well able to interpret the arcana of scientific discoveries for the general public. Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts. ![]()
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