How did scholars begin to decipher ancient scripts like the hieroglyphs?
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Very soon after the birth of the first written language cuneiform ancient Egypt developed its own writing: the hieroglyphic script, immortalised in the Rosetta Stone kept in the British Museum, which consists of a single royal edict, dated 196 BC, written in the hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek alphabetic scripts.

Andrew Robinson is the author of more than twentyfive books, issued by leading general and academic publishers. In addition to "Cracking the Egyptian Code", they include "The Last Man Who Knew Everything" (a biography of Thomas Young): https://geni.us/XIBXvR , and "Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World’s Undeciphered Scripts": https://geni.us/iqP0Q. A former literary editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement, he also writes reviews and features for newspapers, magazines and journals, in both the arts and sciences.

This talk was filmed in the Ri on 18 January 2019.

Watch the second talk on ancient codes, all about the cuneiform language by Irving Finkel:    • Cracking Ancient Codes: Cuneiform Wri...  


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