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 deliberately written to be difficult to interpret.
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
- Tangut 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
- the Franks Casket
Famous decipherers:
- Magnus Celsius, decipherer of the Staveless runes
- Jean-François Champollion, decipherer of the Egyptian hieroglyphs
- Georg Friedrich Grotefend, decipherer of the Old Persian Cuneiform
- Edward Hincks, decipherer of the Babilonian Cuneiform script
- Bedřich Hrozný, decipherer of the Hittite cuneiform script and language
- Vilhelm Thomsen, decipherer of the Old Turkic script
- George Smith, decipherer of the Cypriot syllabary
- Hans Bauer, Édouard Paul Dhorme, and Charles Virolleaud, decipherers of the Ugaritic alphabet
- Sūn Yíràng, decipherer of the Oracle bone script
- Jan-Olaf Tjäder, decipherer of the "great writing" of Ravenna (variant of the Roman cursive)
- Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, decipherers of the Linear B
- Yuri Knorozov, decipherer of the Maya script
- Dhul-Nun al-Misri
- Ibn Wahshiyya