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The Book of Lost Languages: An Epic Quest to Decipher the Past
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Expected 19 Jan 27Win a free print copy of this book!
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“The Book of Lost Languages tells the gripping tale of the individuals who pushed back the dawn of history by 3,000 years.” -Laura Spinney, author of How One Ancient Language Went Global
A riveting, immersive, and puzzle-packed journey through the decoding of ancient languages, unlocking the hidden secrets of human history.
In 1799, a lieutenant in the Napoleon's army accidentally stumbled upon an engraved rock near an Egyptian port city on the Nile. The long-hidden face of the half-buried boulder-the Rosetta Stone, as it came to known-bore the marks of three ancient scripts, an ancient Pharoah's message in triplicate. The stone became an essential key that allowed archaeologists and linguists to decipher the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egyptian, finally unlocking one of the world's most ancient written languages.
Egyptian hieroglyphs are only one of a dozen scripts we meet in The Book of Lost Languages. Endangered-language expert Daniel Harbour takes us on an adventure of discovery through the most extraordinary language decipherments in from the groundbreaking 18th-century effort by a French novelist to unlock the Phoenician alphabet; to an antique collector's use of engraved “dragon” bones to decipher Old Chinese; to revelations about the Andes' woolen writing that unraveled during the writing of this book. These intricate, obsessive quests illuminated millennia of human history that had long gone unread. And through them, ancient peoples now speak to us in words they themselves chose.
Featuring puzzles throughout that give readers the thrill of codebreaking, The Book of Lost Languages reveals the beguiling beauty that underlies the art of decipherment. Harbour weaves an utterly gripping story of people and politics, of genius and ingenuity, of blinkered skepticism and blind acceptance, and most of all, the very texture of ancient life on earth.
A riveting, immersive, and puzzle-packed journey through the decoding of ancient languages, unlocking the hidden secrets of human history.
In 1799, a lieutenant in the Napoleon's army accidentally stumbled upon an engraved rock near an Egyptian port city on the Nile. The long-hidden face of the half-buried boulder-the Rosetta Stone, as it came to known-bore the marks of three ancient scripts, an ancient Pharoah's message in triplicate. The stone became an essential key that allowed archaeologists and linguists to decipher the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egyptian, finally unlocking one of the world's most ancient written languages.
Egyptian hieroglyphs are only one of a dozen scripts we meet in The Book of Lost Languages. Endangered-language expert Daniel Harbour takes us on an adventure of discovery through the most extraordinary language decipherments in from the groundbreaking 18th-century effort by a French novelist to unlock the Phoenician alphabet; to an antique collector's use of engraved “dragon” bones to decipher Old Chinese; to revelations about the Andes' woolen writing that unraveled during the writing of this book. These intricate, obsessive quests illuminated millennia of human history that had long gone unread. And through them, ancient peoples now speak to us in words they themselves chose.
Featuring puzzles throughout that give readers the thrill of codebreaking, The Book of Lost Languages reveals the beguiling beauty that underlies the art of decipherment. Harbour weaves an utterly gripping story of people and politics, of genius and ingenuity, of blinkered skepticism and blind acceptance, and most of all, the very texture of ancient life on earth.
400 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication January 19, 2027
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Goodreads needs to add half star ratings because this is actually a 4.5 star book rather than a 4 star. I loved the range of languages explored in this book. Each chapter explores the topic as a narrative, slowly reconstructing the rebirth of long forgotten languages akin to the scholars that brought them back to life.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
It pains me greatly to decide not to finish this book, but in the advance galley format it is extremely frustrating - none of the images are included, so I can't see the examples of what's being discussed or even consider doing any of the puzzles. I did sign up for the print book giveaway so if I do get a print copy I can re-evaluate my decision here. I'm not going to rate it below 4 because I feel that would be unfair under the circumstances.
I expected from the title that this book would be right up my alley - I love languages and have studied at least one endangered one, and have previously read books about the languages that are almost down to their last native speaker or that lost their last native speaker within our living memory.
It seems to me, after reading about 2/3rds of it, that there is a difference between a LANGUAGE and a WRITING SYSTEM that is being elided a little bit here, unless I missed a bunch of information along the way. Figuring out what a piece of writing says in terms of meaning is not, to my mind, learning a language, and there seems to be a leap in each example language between knowing what the symbols stand for and knowing how they sound. I totally get the concept of a rebus, which would let us draw an eye, a heart, and a sheep and have it mean EYE LOVE EWE, and it seems that many of these very ancient languages are not alphabetic so much as syllabic, and partly rebuses in which a symbol can either represent what it pictures, or how it sounds, at any point in a single piece of writing. But it is not, as far as I can tell, explained at all that someone looking at Egyptian hieroglyphs or Sumerian cuneiform knew that the drawing of an eye was pronounced any particular way at all. Struggling with this, chapter after chapter, has worn me out so I'm going to stop. I'm sorry, as this is a very interesting topic that somehow didn't make it across to me in this book.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read an advance copy of this book.
I expected from the title that this book would be right up my alley - I love languages and have studied at least one endangered one, and have previously read books about the languages that are almost down to their last native speaker or that lost their last native speaker within our living memory.
It seems to me, after reading about 2/3rds of it, that there is a difference between a LANGUAGE and a WRITING SYSTEM that is being elided a little bit here, unless I missed a bunch of information along the way. Figuring out what a piece of writing says in terms of meaning is not, to my mind, learning a language, and there seems to be a leap in each example language between knowing what the symbols stand for and knowing how they sound. I totally get the concept of a rebus, which would let us draw an eye, a heart, and a sheep and have it mean EYE LOVE EWE, and it seems that many of these very ancient languages are not alphabetic so much as syllabic, and partly rebuses in which a symbol can either represent what it pictures, or how it sounds, at any point in a single piece of writing. But it is not, as far as I can tell, explained at all that someone looking at Egyptian hieroglyphs or Sumerian cuneiform knew that the drawing of an eye was pronounced any particular way at all. Struggling with this, chapter after chapter, has worn me out so I'm going to stop. I'm sorry, as this is a very interesting topic that somehow didn't make it across to me in this book.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read an advance copy of this book.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Reviewing for Libary Journal. My Goodreads rating is unrelated to my professional review.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews