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The desire to solve mysteries is as old as humanity itself, and nothing is more intriguing than an unknown system of writing. For centuries theorists and laymen have fallen under the spell of strange and exotic inscriptions. Speculation about Egyptian hieroglyps began in the Renaissance, and the great age of deciperment dawned during the Enlightenment, with Abbe Barthelemy's solution of the Palmyra script. Maurice Pope discusses the outstanding contributions to decipherment made by theorists likeLeibnitz as wellas by the decipherers themselves, from Champollion to Ventris, intergrating original quotations and examples of their diagrams. Among the scripts that he analyzes are the Palmyra script, Sassanid Persian, Egyptian Hieroglyphic, Persion cuneiform. Akkadian cuneiform, the Crypriot syllabry, Luvian Hierogrlypic and Mycenaean Linear B. For this revised edition, the text has been upadted and new section added to the decipherment of the Carian scripts and Maya hieroglyphs.
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