Secrets of Ancient Scripts

History of Decipherment

How scripts silent for centuries — sometimes millennia — were made to speak again. And the mysteries that remain unsolved.

Deciphered

Unsolved

✓ Deciphered

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✓ Deciphered

Discovered 1907 · deciphered from 1931 onward

Decipherment of Sogdian — The Ancient Letters of Dunhuang

Branching from Aramaic, Sogdian was the lingua franca of the Silk Road. It was deciphered through the five Dunhuang letters of 1907 and comparison with related Iranian languages, and revealed as the ancestor of the Uyghur, Mongolian, Manchu, and Todo scripts.

Wang Yuanlu (Daoist priest) · 1849–1931Aurel Stein · 1862–1943Paul Pelliot · 1878–1945Hans Reichelt · 1877–1939W. B. Henning · 1908–1967Nicholas Sims-Williams · 1949–

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𓂀

✓ Deciphered

~1,400 years of silence (AD 394–1822)

Decipherment of Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Unread for 1,400 years, Egyptian hieroglyphs were finally deciphered in 1822 by Champollion using the Rosetta Stone and his knowledge of Coptic.

Jean-François Champollion · 1790–1832Thomas Young · 1773–1829

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𐀀

✓ Deciphered

50 years of mystery (1900–1952)

Decipherment of Linear B

Linear B was deciphered in 1952 by amateur Michael Ventris, who proved it recorded archaic Greek.

Arthur Evans · 1851–1941Alice Kober · 1906–1950Michael Ventris · 1922–1956John Chadwick · 1920–1998

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✓ Deciphered

400 years of misunderstanding (1566–1980s)

Decipherment of Mayan Script

Misunderstood for 400 years, Maya is now roughly 90% deciphered after Knorosov proved its syllabic nature.

John Lloyd Stephens · 1805–1852J. Eric S. Thompson · 1898–1975Alberto Ruz Lhuillier · 1906–1979Diego de Landa · 1524–1579Yuri Knorosov · 1922–1999Linda Schele · 1942–1998

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𒀭

✓ Deciphered

2,000 years of silence (75 BC – AD 1857)

Decipherment of Cuneiform

Silent for 2,000 years, cuneiform was deciphered in 1857 through Grotefend's insight and Rawlinson's death-defying fieldwork.

Georg Friedrich Grotefend · 1775–1853Henry Rawlinson · 1810–1895

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𐤀

✓ Deciphered

~1,500 years of obscurity (c. AD 300–1764)

Decipherment of Phoenician

The ancestor of modern alphabets, Phoenician was deciphered in 1764 by Barthélemy through a bilingual inscription from Malta.

Jean-Jacques Barthélemy · 1716–1795

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✓ Deciphered

Just 3 months (1929–1930)

Decipherment of Ugaritic

Ugaritic, excavated in Syria in 1929, was deciphered in just 3 months by WWI codebreaker Hans Bauer — the fastest ancient script decipherment in history.

Hans Bauer · 1878–1937Édouard Dhorme · 1881–1966

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ᚠ

✓ Deciphered

Gradual decipherment (17th–19th century)

Decipherment of Runic Script

Runic script never fully disappeared, enabling relatively swift decipherment. Ole Worm's 17th-century systematic study confirmed the phonetic values of the 24 Elder Futhark runes.

Ole Worm · 1588–1654Johan Gottfried Liljegren · 1791–1837

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✓ Deciphered

From apothecary to academy (1899–present)

Decipherment of Oracle Bone Script

Wang Yirong recognized the "dragon bones" sold in 1899 Beijing apothecaries as oracle bone script. 160,000 fragments excavated, ~5,000 characters identified, ~1,500 deciphered. The Shang dynasty moved from myth to history, and the direct ancestry of modern Chinese characters — a 3,200-year continuity — was proved.

Wang Yirong · 1845–1900Liu E · 1857–1909Luo Zhenyu · 1866–1940Wang Guowei · 1877–1927

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? Still Unsolved

𐘀

? Undeciphered

Undeciphered for 120+ years (1900–present)

Linear A — Still Silent

Minoan Linear A has been undeciphered for 120+ years. Despite Linear B's decipherment, the Minoan language matches no known tongue, making full decipherment impossible so far.

Arthur Evans · 1851–1941Jan Best · 1942–

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? Undeciphered

Undeciphered for 100+ years (1875–present)

Indus Valley Script — 5,000 Years of Silence

The Indus script has defied decipherment for over 100 years — the only one of the four great ancient civilizations whose writing remains unread. Without a bilingual inscription, it may never be fully decoded.

Asko Parpola · 1941–Steve Farmer · 1950–

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