The Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus were home to a plethora of scripts, including Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B, Cypro-Minoan and Cypro-Syllabic. This Element is dedicated to the conventionally named 'Minoan' Linear A script, used on Crete and the Aegean islands during the Middle and Late Bronze Age (ca. 1800–1450 BCE). Linear A is still undeciphered, and the language it encodes ('Minoan') thus remains elusive. Notwithstanding, scholars have been able to extract a good amount of ...

A noted linguist examines extinct languages, from Egyptian hieroglyphs to the mysteries of as-yet undeciphered writings, in this scholarly work.While certain ancient languages were passed down continuously through the ages, many others were ignored for centuries. When scholars began to decipher these extinct languages in the early nineteenth century, they uncovered previously inaccessible riches of knowledge and history. Yet much work remains to be done on undeciphe...

"[A] fascinating narrative. . . . This is a nuanced, intelligently framed chronicle . . . In a word: enlightening." —George Szpiro, NatureWhile all of us regularly use basic math symbols such as those for plus, minus, and equals, few of us know that many of these symbols weren't available before the sixteenth century. What did mathematicians rely on for their work before then? And how did mathematical notations evolve into what we know to...

A fun, lively, and learned excursion into the alphabet—and cultural history.Letters are tangible language. Joining together in endless combinations to actually show speech, letters convey our messages and tell our stories. While we encounter these tiny shapes hundreds of times a day, we take for granted the long, fascinating history behind one of the most fundamental of human inventions: the alphabet.The heart of the book is the 26 fact-filled “biographies” of letters A thr...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE PRIZE 2025SHORTLISTED FOR THE NEUMANN PRIZE 2025WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO COUNT? WHY ARE HUMANS THE ONLY SPECIES ON EARTH THAT CAN DO IT? WHERE DID COUNTING COME FROM? HOW HAS IT SHAPED SOCIETIES ALONG THE WAY? AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?Counting is an innovative, erudite, world-wrapping journey through humanity’s marvellous ability to impose numbers on ...

The languages of the ancient world and the mysterious scripts, long undeciphered, in which they were encoded have represented one of the most intriguing problems of classical archaeology in modern times. This celebrated account of the decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris was written by his close collaborator in the momentous discovery. In revealing the secrets of Linear B it offers a valuable survey of late Minoan and Mycenaean archaeology, uncovering fascinating detail...

Without writing, there would be no records, no history, no books, and no emails. Writing is an integral and essential part of our lives; but when did it start? Why do we all write differently and how did writing develop into what we use today? All of these questions are answered in this Very Short Introduction. Starting with the origins of writing five thousand years ago, with cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, Andrew Robinson explains how these early forms of writing developed i...

From the earliest scratches on stone and bone to the languages of computers and the internet, A History of Writing offers an investigation into the origin and development of writing throughout the world. Illustrated with numerous examples, this book offers a global overview in a form that everyone can follow. The author also reveals his own discoveries made since the early 1980s, making it a useful reference for both students and specialists as well as the general reader.

Hieroglyphs were far more than a language. They were an omnipresent and all-powerful force in communicating the messages of ancient Egyptian culture for over three thousand years; used as monumental art, as a means of identifying Egyptianness, and for rarefied communication with the gods. In this exciting new study, Penelope Wilson explores the cultural significance of the script with an emphasis on previously neglected areas such as cryptography, the continuing decipherment into modern ti...

Based on recent archaeological, historical and accounting research, this book presents a series of well-supported, but often surprising hypotheses on the 10,000 year-old history of accounting. Mattessich also illustrates the astounding sophistication manifested in some of the accounting and budgeting procedures throughout history. The second part of the book deals with the first manuscript containing sections describing accounting activities, the Kautilya's Arthasastra, written ab...

Letters are tangible language. Joining together in endless combinations to actually show speech, letters convey our messages and tell our stories. While we encounter these tiny shapes hundreds of times a day, we take for granted the long, fascinating history behind one of the most fundamental of human inventions--the alphabet.The heart of the book is the 26 fact-filled “biographies” of letters A through Z, each one identifying the letter’s particular significance for modern readers...

An archaeologist and art historian examines the impact of literacy on visual art during the early urban period in the Near East.Denise Schmandt-Besserat opened a new chapter in the history of literacy when she demonstrated that the cuneiform script invented in the ancient Near East in the late fourth millennium BC—the world's oldest known system of writing—derived from an archaic counting device. Her discovery, was published in Before Writing: From Counting to ...