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Decipherment is possible with respect to languages and scripts. One can also study or try to decipher how spoken languages that no longer exist were once pronounced, or how living languages used to be pronounced in prior eras. Notable examples of decipherment include the decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts and the decipherment of cuneiform.
Edward Hincks, an Irish clergyman whose primary interest was the decipherment of cuneiform, made important contributions in the 1830s and 1840s. Whereas Champollion's translations of texts had filled in gaps in his knowledge with informed guesswork, Hincks tried to proceed more systematically. [ 134 ]
In genetics, decipherment is the successful attempt to understand DNA, which is viewed metaphorically as a text containing word-like units. [2] Throughout science the term decipherment is synonymous with the understanding of biological and chemical phenomena.
The decipherment of Babylonian ultimately led to the decipherment of Akkadian, which was a close predecessor of Babylonian. The actual techniques used to decipher the Akkadian language have never been fully published; Hincks described how he sought the proper names already legible in the deciphered Persian while Rawlinson never said anything at ...
A Georgian palimpsest from the 5th or 6th century. The word palimpsest derives from Latin palimpsestus, which derives from παλίμψηστος, palímpsēstos [4] (from Ancient Greek πάλιν (pálin) 'again' and ψάω (psáō) 'scrape'), a compound word that describes the process: "The original writing was scraped and washed off, the surface resmoothed, and the new literary material ...
One of the largest obstacles scholars had to overcome during the early days of Assyriology was the decipherment of curious triangular markings on many of the artifacts and ruins found at Mesopotamian sites. These markings, which were termed "cuneiform" by Thomas Hyde in 1700, were long considered to be merely decorations and ornaments. It was ...
The oldest known alphabetic writing has been found etched onto finger-length clay cylinders unearthed from a tomb in Syria.. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University in the US dated the writing ...
Prinsep guessed correctly that they stood for "danam", the Sanskrit word for "gift" or "donation", which permitted to further increase the number of known letters. [142] [154] With the help of Ratna Pâla, a Singhalese Pali scholar and linguist, Prinsep then completed the full decipherment of the Brahmi script.