Lost Languages
“ The Enigma of The World's Undeciphered Scripts ”
The author of this book, is Andrew Robinson. He is the literary editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement ( London ).
The book investigates the most famous examples, leading us back to a far-distant past obscured by the ravages of time and haunted by code breakers hungry for glory.
The book begins with an incisive description of decipherment techniques and tells the stories of three great decipherments: Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the 19 th century, the Mayan glyphs of Central America, and the Linear B clay tables of the Minoan civilization of Crete in the 20 th century. Then it tackles the important scripts awaiting their decipherers.
Then the book will shed light on the most important scripts needed to be deciphered, which are : Indus script, it is found on seal stones, pottery and copper tablets excavated in Pakistan and India . It is the only writing of the four “first” civilizations that can't be read. Unraveled, it would not only break the millennia-long silence of the impressive Indus valley civilization, it would also shed new light on the origins of the Indo-European ancestors of the modern West. Then, there the Etruscans, who have spellbound the imagination since Renaissance times. The language spoken by the Etruscans remains wrapped un mystery; if penetrated, it could reveal the history of a pre-Roman society almost as great as ancient Greece . And on isolated Easter island , the exotic Rongo rongo script has long been an irresistible magnet for ambitious decipherers. This script is incised on wood with sharks' teeth. These texts are the only writing in pre-colonial Oceania . They definitely contains lunar calendar and may tell the story of the origins of humankind in the Pacific Ocean . How old is Rongo rongo? No one knows for sure.
**The English version of Lost Language has been translated into Arabic by a group of Egyptian scholars and it is forthcoming soon.
