Description
The Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphic to Linear B
Author: Maurice Pope
Hard cover with dust jacket. Good condition.
The Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphic to Linear B is a scholarly yet accessible history of how ancient writing systems were gradually decoded, written by linguist Maurice Pope. The book focuses on two of the most famous breakthroughs in historical linguistics: the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs and the later cracking of Linear B.
A major part of the book recounts the long struggle to understand Egyptian hieroglyphics, highlighting key figures such as Jean-François Champollion, whose work in the early 19th century proved that the script combined phonetic and symbolic elements. Pope explains how the discovery of the Rosetta Stone provided the crucial bilingual key that allowed scholars to compare Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphic texts.
The second major narrative follows the decipherment of Linear B in the mid-20th century by Michael Ventris, with important contributions from John Chadwick. Pope shows how Ventris’s insight—that the script encoded an early form of Greek rather than a non-Greek language—transformed understanding of Mycenaean civilisation.
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