Pope: The Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphs to Maya Script. Revised Edition. Paperback 
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• Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphs to Maya Script. Revised Edition. Paperback
• Maurice Pope
• 232 pages, with 126 illustrations, plus map. 1999

The desire to solve such mysteries as unknown systems of writing is as old as humanity itself. Speculation about Egyptian hieroglyphs began in the Renaissance but the great age of decipherment dawned during the Enlightenment, with the Abbé Barthélemy’s solution of the Palmyra script. Maurice Pope discusses the outstanding contributions to the science of decipherment made by theorists like Leibnitz and by brilliant practitioners from Champollion to Ventris, using quotations from their original publications and many examples of their drawings, tables and diagrams. For this revised edition the text has been brought up-to-date and a new section added on Maya hieroglyphs