Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 March 2026
This book—an extensive and daring linguistic investigation into the languages underlying the undeciphered Bronze Age Aegean scripts—is unlike any other book that has ever been written on these scripts. The author tackles not just one of them, but all of them: Linear A, Cretan Hieroglyphic, the script on the Phaistos Disk, Cypro-Minoan, and Eteocypriot. The arguments and analyses are meticulously designed and highly credible. Best of all, the book is written in wonderfully clear English that virtually anyone can understand, and there is a substantial glossary of linguistic terms at the back of the book for readers to consult. The author formulates no fewer than fifty separate hypotheses about the nature of the languages underlying these scripts, and as identification of the language behind an undeciphered script is the most important key to its decipherment, this book constitutes a significant advance along the road to the decipherment of all five of these scripts. This book will be of the greatest interest not just to linguists, philologists, archaeologists, and ancient historians who specialize in these scripts, but also to all novices and aficionados of decipherment.
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