Write like an Egyptian (Book Review)

The New Criterion ^ | March 2022 | John Steele Gordon

[ProtectOurFreedom]

This is a review of "The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone," by Edward Dolnick.

This sounds like a fascinating book. I've not heard of author Dolnick, but reviewer Gordon highly recommends his other two books.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Ping!

[Scarlett156]

That book sounds like a blast! Thank you.

[algore]

I think there was a cuniform hieroglyph language pack for windows

[Openurmind]

“I think there was a cuniform hieroglyph language pack for windows”

Egyptian hieroglyph translator... :)

https://funtranslations.com/hieroglyphics

[kiryandil]

Quite prolific, and an interesting biblio:

Books

• Madness on the Couch : Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis (1998)
• Down the Great Unknown : John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon (2001).
• The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece (2005)
• The Forger’s Spell : A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century (2008)
• The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World (2011).
• The Rush: America's Fevered Quest for Fortune, 1848-1853 (2014)
• The Seeds of Life: From Aristotle to da Vinci, from Sharks' Teeth to Frogs' Pants, the Long and Strange Quest to Discover Where Babies Come From (2017)
• The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone (2021)

[ifinnegan]

This excerpt is well written and interesting.

[FatherofFive]

The museum of Natural History is magnificent. I wonder what will happen to these treasures, and in the Louvre and d’Orsay, after the Muslims take over Europe

[GOPmember]

[the OlLine Rebel]

Let us go, Brandon?

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Amazing breadth of interests, isn’t it? The author of this book review says he is a great writer.

[Flick Lives]

Fascinating how some languages developed as phonetic and others as symbolic. It’s actually a complex abstraction to create a language based on sounds, with multiple symbols forming words vs assigning a single symbol as representing a word. It’s on the level of abstraction of zero in mathematics.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Yes, the development of the abstraction of sounds to a symbol was an amazing breakthrough in human development, wasn’t it? We had probably hit the end of the road in development with pictographs and the next leap in civilization required a symbolic phonetic language.

[PersonOfNo Consequence]

Carl Sagan mentioned Champollion and the deciphering of hieroglyphics in the original Cosmos series.

[Inyo-Mono]

I’ll have to check out that book too.

[Jane Austen]

Interesting.

[DUMBGRUNT]

—”I think there was a cuniform hieroglyph language pack for windows”

YES!
But you need a large format 3D printer and good luck finding drivers.

[Flick Lives]

Yes, the development of the abstraction of sounds to a symbol was an amazing breakthrough in human development, wasn’t it? We had probably hit the end of the road in development with pictographs and the next leap in civilization required a symbolic phonetic language.

—

Interesting too there is no “primitive” form of hieroglyphics; just there they are in all their complexity. Always wondered if the ancient Ancient Egypt was founded by survivors of some antediluvian culture perhaps thousands of years older.

[libertylover]

It was in the British Museum when I saw it (surrounded by dozens of Japanese with cameras). BTW, I couldn’t read a damn word on it.

[null and void]

Who will remember us in 5000 years?