The Book of Lost Languages: An Epic Quest to Decipher the Past

An immersive journey into the art of decipherment and the lost past that emerges when ancient scripts are brought back to lifeFor centuries, the world’s earliest writing stood unread.Only through the work of decipherers did their languages begin to speak again, revealing lives that were long forgotten. The Book of Lost Languages is part detective story, part history, part linguistic adventure.It traces the epic journeys of decipherment, from the international strife that unearthed the Rosetta Stone, key to Egypt’s hieroglyphs, to the drunken wager that unsealed Old Persian, and from the malaria cure that revealed China’s most ancient writing to the proof by chocolate that Mayan writing had been unlocked behind the Cold War’s Iron Curtain.From earliest victories to latest findings, Harbour chronicles the remarkable mental feats that have restored forgotten worlds. As it moves through these discoveries, the book celebrates the minds behind them - their strengths and quirks, their brillia