In a succinct and absorbing text, Andrew Robinson explains the interconnection between sound, symbol and script. He discusses each of the major writing systems in turn, from cuneiform and Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs to alphabets and the scripts of China and Japan, as well as others such as Cherokee ‘alphabet’ and the writing of runes. Full coverage is given to the history of decipherment and a provocative chapter devoted to undeciphered scripts challenges the reader: can these codes be ever broken?
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