Lost Languages and Decipherment

Undergraduate / Graduate

Hieroglyphs. Cuneiform. The Phoenician alphabet. Two centuries ago these and other scripts could not be read; some of them were not considered writing at all. Today, scholars debate the fine points of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian grammar. They read early Greek in Linear B tablets, ancient Mayan in Meso­ameri­can glyphs, an unsuspected Indo-European language in curious Anatolian hieroglyphs, and other long-forgotten languages in other scripts, some of them cracked only recently. In this course we will examine several famous and not-so-famous decipherments: how scholars deciphered these scripts, decoded their languages and brought their literatures and cultures back to life. We will also consider why so many scripts must be deciphered-why some scripts and languages have died out so completely that they have been forgotten. Finally, we will investigate a number of scripts that have yet to be deciphered, such as Etruscan, the Rongorongo script of Easter Island (pictured above), and the knot-based writing system of the Inca khipus, and consider why they remain unsolved.