Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts

Deciphering ancient dead languages is one of the most fascinating challenges a man/woman can face in his/her lifetime, and the more obstacles faced by the challenger the better. In this regard, the Frenchman mathematician Jean-François Champollion, the decipherer of the Egyptian hieroglyphs in the Rosetta Stone (the name Rosetta derives from the place Rashid in the North of Africa), the most well known block of stone in the world. Alongside with him is the British amateur archeologist and linguist Michael Ventris, who in 1953 broke the code of the so-called Minoan Linear B tablets. COntrary with what happened in the case of the Rosetta Stone, where alongside with the text to be deciphered (in demotic Egyptian and in hieroglyphics), there was not a base text (in Greek) to be confuted with. It is so not surprising that the great majority of decipherers attained its goas before reaching 30 years of age.

The feats of these two men, who depended upon the previous work of many others who trod the same paths before them, is detailed narrated in this very good book, richly illustrated with many ellucidative diagrams, graphs, drawings and pictures of alphabets, sillabarys and hieroglyphs, Egyptian inclusive. Andrew Robinson, the author of this excelent book, is in this regard extremely well equiped to present difficult subjects in a very easy manner to the lay reader like myself, who is only looking for the big picture and do not care about the multitude of details present in this type of work. The chapter on the deciphering of the Maya script by a Russian scholar is also a very informative one, in fact overflowing the reader with a lot of pertinent graphic information.

The scripts still waiting to be broken (Linear A among others and the scripts of the Easter isle) are very fascinating chapters of the book and one almost feels the urge to quit everything immediately and jump right away into the arena of deciphering dead languages.
In my opinion, this book is as good as it could be on the important subject of the decoding of the dead languages of humanity.

This edition of the book is indeed a very rich one and this is the kind of book one feels pretty much comfortable to give as a gift to friends and relatives. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
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If I could have any one thing come to pass (within reason) in linguistics, it would be a decipherment of the Indus Valley script. But no matter what your personal obsession - Rongorongo, perhaps, or Linear "A", or maybe just a basic interest in how linguists try (and sometimes succeed) to decipher the unknown writings of the world - there is likely to be much in "Lost Languages" that will interest and entertain you. It is primarily an introduction to the subject for the general reader, although it seems likely that even a specialist will not necessarily be familiar with all the languages included here.

Robinson begins with the story of three formerly undeciphered scripts that have now been (more or less) successfully deciphered: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Linear B, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Mayan glyphs. This sets the stage for short chapters on important but so-far undeciphered scripts: Meroitic, Etruscan, Linear A, Proto-Elamite, Rongorongo, Zapotec, Isthmian (Mexico), Indus Valley, and the Phaistos Disc. Robinson shows how the principles of decipherment have been applied to these scripts, explains why they remain largely undeciphered at present, and offers a reasoned estimate of their chances for successful decipherment in the future.

As an introduction to the field of decipherment this is, I think, a very successful book. Naturally it lacks the details to be found in more specialized studies, but Robinson clearly articulates the basic principles of decipherment and their application to these very interesting scripts. Examples are given for the reader to work out, and other examples show how would-be decipherers, both famous and not-so-famous, have sometimes gone wrong. One could only wish for the inclusion of more scripts (why not cunieform?) and more in-depth coverage, but as an introduction, "Lost Languages" fulfills its purpose admirably. Maybe someone who reads this book will "catch the bug," go on to more advanced study, and - who knows? - someday find the key to one of these enigmatic writings.

I teach Logic and the thing that makes this book absolutely fascinating is the way that Robinson explains the process of deciphering lost languages. We've all heard the story of the Rosetta Stone, but the discovery of the stone only made it *possible* to read Ancient Egyptian inscriptions -- it took an enormous amount of intelligence to sort out the basics of the writing system. Robinson does a wonderful job of explaining how the evidence is actually used to unlock these scripts. He also shows how mysterious writings are fertile ground for various "crackpot theories" (though I like the idea that the Phaistos Disk is a gameboard).

Holy Olio's review (10/27/02)of Robinson's Lost Languages says that he is encouraged that the author mentioned Barry Fell without dismissing him or disrespecting him. I would say, however,that the Robinson statement on the first page of his concluding chapter comes close to being a dismissal: "A Harvard University professor in zoology, Barry Fell, was convinced that he had deciphered rongorongo and the Phaistos disc before he died a few years ago, though his extensive published papers were very far from scientific in their method." It is to be hoped that Julian Fell's biography of his father, Barry,"Biography of a Renaissance Man" will eventually be published in book form. Part 2 of the biography, "Barry Fell's Revolution in Deciphering Old World Scripts" appears in the Summer 2001 issue of 21st Century Science & Technology. ...

This book discusses most of the world's translation achievements.

Anyone with an interest in India, its ancient history, and recent discoveries offshore will find the author's discussion of the still-untranslated Indus Valley script a good place to start. No consensus on the question of its origin has formed, but its clear that soon its Dravidian identity will be agreed upon.

As an amusement, the author reproduces a letter to _The Economist_ magazine regarding its article on the Phaistos Disk. The letter calls it a century old fraud (the disk, not the magazine) that could be exposed as such using thermoluminescence. [p 298].

The book's author also mentions Barry Fell as having translated the Phaistos Disk and the _rongorongo_ texts from Easter Island, but without further discussion of these achievements.

The chapter on the Phaistos Disk is interesting but unsatisfying because of the lack of a discussion of Fell (while the Fischer "translation" is discussed in depth, merely in order to dismiss it). On 306-307 there are some illustrations of the Arkalochori axe found on Crete. The haft has two types of "crested" heads (one face one, one in profile) somewhat resembling what Robinson calls the "Mohican" glyph that is the most common symbol on the Phaistos Disk. That (and a very weak second example) are all that has been found on Crete resembling the PD hieroglyphs in a century of excavation.

As Fell pointed out, the typeface (these characters were impressed on the clay using dyes, making the disk the oldest known example of a text printed with moveable type) is straight out of Anatolia. That source is what led to his decipherment of it -- he began by assuming it was from the Anatolian group of tongues, and came up with a workable and plausible translation.

I'm encouraged that the author of this book mentioned Fell without dismissing him or disrespecting him, as a reviewer for _Archaeology_ once did -- suggesting that one of his books was a candidate for burning. _Lost Languages_ is worth a read.