Decipherment

In philology, decipherment is the discovery of the meaning of texts written in ancient or obscure languages or scripts.[1] Decipherment in cryptography refers to decryption.[2] The term is used sardonically in everyday language to describe attempts to read poor handwriting.[3] In genetics, decipherment is the successful attempt to understand DNA, which is viewed metaphorically as a text containing word-like units.[4] Throughout science the term decipherment is synonymous with the understanding of biological and chemical phenomena.

"Decipher" redirects here. For other uses, see Decipher (disambiguation).

Ancient languages

In a few cases, a multilingual artifact has been necessary to facilitate decipherment, the Rosetta Stone being the classic example. Statistical techniques provide another pathway to decipherment, as does the analysis of modern languages derived from ancient languages in which undeciphered texts are written. Archaeological and historical information is helpful in verifying hypothesized decipherments.

Decipherers
Name of scholar Script deciphered
Magnus Celsius Staveless Runes
Jón Ólafsson of Grunnavík Cipher runes
Jean-Jacques Barthélemy Palmyrene alphabet
Jean-Jacques Barthélemy Phoenician alphabet
Jean-François Champollion Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Georg Friedrich Grotefend, Eugène Burnouf, and Henry Rawlinson Old Persian Cuneiform
Manuel Gómez-Moreno Northeastern Iberian script
James Prinsep Brahmi, Kharosthi
Edward Hincks Mesopotamian Cuneiform
Bedřich Hrozný Hittite Cuneiform
Vilhelm Thomsen Old Turkic
George Smith and Samuel Birch, et al.[5] Cypriot syllabary
Hans Bauer and Édouard Paul Dhorme[6] Ugaritic alphabet
Wang Yirong, Liu E, and Sūn Yíràng, et al. Oracle Bone script
Michael Ventris, John Chadwick, and Alice Kober Linear B
Yuri Knorozov and Tatiana Proskouriakoff, et al. Maya
Jan-Olof Tjäder "'Enlarged opening script'" of Ravenna (variant of the Latin alphabet)
Zaza Alexidze Caucasian Albanian alphabet
gollark: Oh, now top isn't loading.
gollark: But UPTIME!
gollark: ```(2/8) Reloading system manager configuration...Failed to reload daemon: Transport endpoint is not connectederror: command failed to execute correctly```???
gollark: I did. It doesn't show anything interesting.
gollark: I don't want to reboot since I have 8 weeks of uptime.

See also

Deciphered scripts

Undeciphered scripts

Undeciphered texts

References
  1. Trask, R.L (2000). The Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, p. 82 ("The process of determining the relation between an extinct and unknown writing system and the language it represents. Strictly, decipherment is the elucidation of the script—that is, determining the values of the written characters")
  2. Vaudenay, Serge (2006). A Classical Introduction to Cryptography. Springer, p.3. ("Action to transform a ciphertext into a plaintext by an authorized party [emphasis added]")
  3. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/decipherment
  4. Snustad, D. Peter, et al. (2016). Principles of Genetics. Wiley, p.302
  5. http://lila.sns.it/mnamon/index.php?page=Scrittura&id=4&lang=en
  6. "Anatomy of a Decipherment", http://images.library.wisc.edu/WI/EFacs/transactions/WT1966/reference/wi.wt1966.adcorre.pdf"
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