What do you think?
Rate this book
Glyph-Breaker
After successfully deciphering the Rongorongo script of Easter Island, Steven Roger Fischer gained a unique place in the pantheon of he is the only person to have deciphered not one but two ancient scripts. Both of these scripts yield clues of great historical importance. Fischers previous decipherment, of a Cretan artefact called the Phaistos Disk, provided the key to the ancient Minoan language and showed it to be closely related to Mycenaean Greek. Fischer's decipherment of Rongorongo shows that it was not merely a mnemonic device for recalling memorised texts, but was actually read and used for creative composition. This is the exciting story of these two decipherments, by the man who now must rank as the greatest glyphbreaker of all time.
234 pages, Hardcover
First published September 5, 1997
7 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 30, 2011
This isn't a scholarly book, it's an autobiographical description of the work of Steven R. Fischer, the independent scholar who has apparently deciphered two previously elusive scripts: the writing on the Phaistos Disk of Crete, and the Rongorongo script of Easter Island. If this is true, he has truly managed to do something remarkable that no one else has ever done: discovered the underlying languages of two completely unrelated writing systems.
Fischer is clearly a potent and controversial force in epigraphy and decipherment studies, as well as in Austronesian linguistics. His analyses are very compelling and interesting. He claims that the Phaistos disk is a 4000 year old call to war. He also argues that the string of vocatives at the beginning (hear ye Nubians, Hear ye Libyans etc etc) indicates that Minoan civilization was a surprisingly multicultural one. His analysis of the Rongorongo script is based largely on repeating patters of "suffixes" attached to many of the glyphs, including a phallic marker that he interprets as "copulates with", and a hand marker to indicate plurality/universal quantification. He argues that that Rongorongo texts are mostly (although not entirely) genealogical or creation myth genealogical lists of the form X copulates with Y and issues Z. He also convincingly argues that the notion of writing was borrowed from brief early spanish contact, but that the script itself is completely indigenous.
His presentation of his decipherment techniques are certainly convincing to someone like me who isn't an expert in epigraphy. I found his layperson description of his methodologies (different for the two scripts) to represent a realistic mix of intuition and insight with mind numbing drudgery. This seems entirely consistent with the scientific process. He's rightly very critical of fanciful unscientific work on these scripts, but it's worth noting that his own work has been criticized along similar lines. It's clearly a source of great bitterness for him; but as an academic myself, I can attest that such bitternesses are typical of anyone who devotes their lives, energy and passion to a topic only to have it criticized/dismissed by others with perhaps less expertise.
One thing that I found particularly interesting about this book, apart from its linguistic content, was the perspectives of a qualified but unaffiliated linguist about the whole world of academia and it's strict hierarchies and appreciations of academic rank. This is something that Fischer has clearly struggled with. His fairly frequent citations of words of praise from established scholars shows that he deeply craves academic legitimacy, but at the same time making it clear that he resents his exclusion/separation from institutional academe. The world of independent scholars is fraught with economic, professional and perhaps psychological pitfalls. And I found his perspective on the situation uniquely insightful.
I can't end without saying that I think Fischer's wife Taki must be an absolute saint. Fischer himself clearly adores her, which is good because she has spent 40 odd years dealing with his obsession with old texts, arcane material, and focused determinism. Fischer also indicates that several times he may well have been on the edge of a breakdown, which combined with his occasionally fragile ego, must have made him a very difficult person to live with. Given that she also seems to have been his primary means of financial support, including all his trips to exotic locales to look at manuscripts and inscriptions means that she was also generous with her time and money. It appears that she is probably also the financial backer behind his new institute of polynesian languages and literatures in Auckland NZ. A saint indeed.
Fischer is clearly a potent and controversial force in epigraphy and decipherment studies, as well as in Austronesian linguistics. His analyses are very compelling and interesting. He claims that the Phaistos disk is a 4000 year old call to war. He also argues that the string of vocatives at the beginning (hear ye Nubians, Hear ye Libyans etc etc) indicates that Minoan civilization was a surprisingly multicultural one. His analysis of the Rongorongo script is based largely on repeating patters of "suffixes" attached to many of the glyphs, including a phallic marker that he interprets as "copulates with", and a hand marker to indicate plurality/universal quantification. He argues that that Rongorongo texts are mostly (although not entirely) genealogical or creation myth genealogical lists of the form X copulates with Y and issues Z. He also convincingly argues that the notion of writing was borrowed from brief early spanish contact, but that the script itself is completely indigenous.
His presentation of his decipherment techniques are certainly convincing to someone like me who isn't an expert in epigraphy. I found his layperson description of his methodologies (different for the two scripts) to represent a realistic mix of intuition and insight with mind numbing drudgery. This seems entirely consistent with the scientific process. He's rightly very critical of fanciful unscientific work on these scripts, but it's worth noting that his own work has been criticized along similar lines. It's clearly a source of great bitterness for him; but as an academic myself, I can attest that such bitternesses are typical of anyone who devotes their lives, energy and passion to a topic only to have it criticized/dismissed by others with perhaps less expertise.
One thing that I found particularly interesting about this book, apart from its linguistic content, was the perspectives of a qualified but unaffiliated linguist about the whole world of academia and it's strict hierarchies and appreciations of academic rank. This is something that Fischer has clearly struggled with. His fairly frequent citations of words of praise from established scholars shows that he deeply craves academic legitimacy, but at the same time making it clear that he resents his exclusion/separation from institutional academe. The world of independent scholars is fraught with economic, professional and perhaps psychological pitfalls. And I found his perspective on the situation uniquely insightful.
I can't end without saying that I think Fischer's wife Taki must be an absolute saint. Fischer himself clearly adores her, which is good because she has spent 40 odd years dealing with his obsession with old texts, arcane material, and focused determinism. Fischer also indicates that several times he may well have been on the edge of a breakdown, which combined with his occasionally fragile ego, must have made him a very difficult person to live with. Given that she also seems to have been his primary means of financial support, including all his trips to exotic locales to look at manuscripts and inscriptions means that she was also generous with her time and money. It appears that she is probably also the financial backer behind his new institute of polynesian languages and literatures in Auckland NZ. A saint indeed.
July 19, 2021
“A “glyph” (short for hieroglyph) is a sign in a script. And a “breaker” is a person who cracks a script code. A “glyphbreaker” is then a decipherer, someone who lets us read the unreadable, the linguistic magician who gives voice to the muted past”- preface
“For which a unique achievement we were to be feted in Washington, D.C. in the many rootbeer-and cake days that followed, iced with special reception at the exclusive Cosmos Club-
Glyphbreaker, Steven Fischer
When it concerns one of the first Oceania pictorial lexicon findings discovered, A lot of consideration should be given to outside sources which can be useful for ones own conclusions. I’m not an expert, or a guru this or that I’m just a person making my own observations of contemporary notions very objectively while reading this book. Now, I’ve been fortunate enough to come across some very impeccable manuscripts written by individuals with very thorough understandings of past civilizations one that comes to mind instantaneously is Otto Muck’s writings on Atlantis and it was officially recognized as the most authentic recollection of that past civilization and their events (that in many ways historically coincides and creatively collaborates with Eduard Albert Meier’s annotations on Atlantis) , with an exception to the definitive event of the asteroid collision of course. Because of the controversy of the Rongorongo, the plejarens have refrained and rightfully so to not offer any detailed insights into the meanings of the rongorongo. I’m not going imply that I’m going to attempt to decipher this riddle myself either that isn’t the point.
The first chapter of the book the author comments on mostly on his own life, rubbing elbows in Washington D.C at the cosmos club insinuating he solved the riddle of the Phaistos Disk (for fame), early 1960 he learns Russian in a post Sputnik world. 1965 graduates and makes a crony song played on the west coast and in Honolulu, 1973 graduates with a PHD in philology and linguistics from UCLA. Moves to New Zealand, then to Nuremberg Germany to write books. Around 1982 gets familiar with the phaistos disk, and discusses the excavation efforts of Sir Arthur Evans of the ancient civilization culture site of the Knossos and minions (2000 b.c) of the early 1900’s. So this book so far seems like many other artifact interpretations as a onesided misinterpretation with a lack of recognizing correlations to past ancient advanced high cultures and historical knowledge sources, that reads with a smugness of pseudo posh eccentricism and contemporary know it all bias based on the fallacies of misanthropic darwinism (and as Darwin, disinformation for fame ).
————————————still reading————————-
“For which a unique achievement we were to be feted in Washington, D.C. in the many rootbeer-and cake days that followed, iced with special reception at the exclusive Cosmos Club-
Glyphbreaker, Steven Fischer
When it concerns one of the first Oceania pictorial lexicon findings discovered, A lot of consideration should be given to outside sources which can be useful for ones own conclusions. I’m not an expert, or a guru this or that I’m just a person making my own observations of contemporary notions very objectively while reading this book. Now, I’ve been fortunate enough to come across some very impeccable manuscripts written by individuals with very thorough understandings of past civilizations one that comes to mind instantaneously is Otto Muck’s writings on Atlantis and it was officially recognized as the most authentic recollection of that past civilization and their events (that in many ways historically coincides and creatively collaborates with Eduard Albert Meier’s annotations on Atlantis) , with an exception to the definitive event of the asteroid collision of course. Because of the controversy of the Rongorongo, the plejarens have refrained and rightfully so to not offer any detailed insights into the meanings of the rongorongo. I’m not going imply that I’m going to attempt to decipher this riddle myself either that isn’t the point.
The first chapter of the book the author comments on mostly on his own life, rubbing elbows in Washington D.C at the cosmos club insinuating he solved the riddle of the Phaistos Disk (for fame), early 1960 he learns Russian in a post Sputnik world. 1965 graduates and makes a crony song played on the west coast and in Honolulu, 1973 graduates with a PHD in philology and linguistics from UCLA. Moves to New Zealand, then to Nuremberg Germany to write books. Around 1982 gets familiar with the phaistos disk, and discusses the excavation efforts of Sir Arthur Evans of the ancient civilization culture site of the Knossos and minions (2000 b.c) of the early 1900’s. So this book so far seems like many other artifact interpretations as a onesided misinterpretation with a lack of recognizing correlations to past ancient advanced high cultures and historical knowledge sources, that reads with a smugness of pseudo posh eccentricism and contemporary know it all bias based on the fallacies of misanthropic darwinism (and as Darwin, disinformation for fame ).
————————————still reading————————-
July 31, 2021
Finally a readable book on codebreaking that doesn't think backwards writing is symbology!
*where's Dan Brown?*
This is a good book if you aren't a n academic in the area of glyphs and languages. I'm not. I'm not sure what a linguistic academic would think of it. However I liked it because of its accessible style. You only needed to come armed with curiosity for the ancient world and the codebreaking journey Dr Fischer went on.
It's autobiographical, and Dr Fischer's journey is truly remarkable (or at least how he told it). He broke two very different codes and he poured his heart and life into it - I'm not sure how many people could be that dedicated. His wife also seemed absolutely amazing and so supportive, it's clear he could not have done this without her tremendous emotional support, her interest and her willingness to sacrifice for this dream.
I enjoyed reading about both codes but the Phaistos Disk code was the more interesting to me.
I found it fascinating how the glyphbreaking takes into account history and linguistics and pattern-matching, and brings it all together. Dr Fischer talks about that special moment you have in glyphbreaking, when things come together. Reading this book, I felt like we came to that "aha!" moment with him and shared that with him - just a bit, the fun of it coming together, as he reveals piece by piece how he works out the glyphs and patterns.
I think this book was pitched at the right level for me - it showed enough of the process and background and was challenging enough to not make it feel like the author was talking down to the audience, yet there was the humanity of the story and it was not too dense or dry or long that it would bore those or lose those whose background is not archaeological codebreaking (which for most of us, it isn't).
*where's Dan Brown?*
This is a good book if you aren't a n academic in the area of glyphs and languages. I'm not. I'm not sure what a linguistic academic would think of it. However I liked it because of its accessible style. You only needed to come armed with curiosity for the ancient world and the codebreaking journey Dr Fischer went on.
It's autobiographical, and Dr Fischer's journey is truly remarkable (or at least how he told it). He broke two very different codes and he poured his heart and life into it - I'm not sure how many people could be that dedicated. His wife also seemed absolutely amazing and so supportive, it's clear he could not have done this without her tremendous emotional support, her interest and her willingness to sacrifice for this dream.
I enjoyed reading about both codes but the Phaistos Disk code was the more interesting to me.
I found it fascinating how the glyphbreaking takes into account history and linguistics and pattern-matching, and brings it all together. Dr Fischer talks about that special moment you have in glyphbreaking, when things come together. Reading this book, I felt like we came to that "aha!" moment with him and shared that with him - just a bit, the fun of it coming together, as he reveals piece by piece how he works out the glyphs and patterns.
I think this book was pitched at the right level for me - it showed enough of the process and background and was challenging enough to not make it feel like the author was talking down to the audience, yet there was the humanity of the story and it was not too dense or dry or long that it would bore those or lose those whose background is not archaeological codebreaking (which for most of us, it isn't).
July 13, 2021
“A “glyph” (short hieroglyph) is a sign in script. And a “breaker” is a person who cracks a script code. A “glyphbreaker” is then a decipherer, someone who lets us read the unreadable, that linguistic magician who gives voice to the mute past.”-
Preface, glyphbreaker, Steven Fischer
———————————-still reading——————-
Preface, glyphbreaker, Steven Fischer
———————————-still reading——————-
September 16, 2019
This is kinda two books in one. But I liked both of them. Next to read: his (very long) academic book about Rongorongo itself. I suspect I'll just skim it...
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews