Decipherment

Decipherment is the analysis of documents written in ancient languages, where the language is unknown, or knowledge of the language has been lost.

It is closely related to cryptanalysis — the difference being that the original document was not deliberately written to be difficult to decipher.

The term has also been used to describe the analysis of the genetic code information encoded in DNA - see the Human Genome Project article for more on this.

Some people have also used the word metaphorically to mean something like 'understanding'.

Examples of successful script decipherment: Cuneiform script
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Kharoshthi script
Linear B
Maya script

Famous documents that have been the subject of decipherments, successful or failed: the Behistun Inscription
the Dresden Codex
the Edicts of Ashoka
the Phaistos Disc
the Rohonc Codex
the Rosetta Stone
the Voynich Manuscript

Famous decipherers: Jean-François Champollion
Georg Friedrich Grotefend
Yuri Knorozov
Michael Ventris
Magnus Celsius
Dhul-Nun al-Misri
Ibn Wahshiyya

See also

Decipherment of rongorongo
Indus script
Decipherment of Al-Khwārizmī numerals [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robertolyra]
Combinatorial method (linguistics)

Translation of "Decipherment"

German: Entschlüsselung, Estonian: Dešifreerimine, Spanish: Desciframiento, French: Décrypter, Japanese: 解読, Russian: Дешифровка, Turkish: Deşifre.