Decipherment

Decipherment is the analysis of documents?, events?, lab experiments?, [body language]? etc. that a philosopher undertakes to get as close as possible to truth.

Is usually considered the second step in comprehension? after cryptanalysis

Because of the fact that the epistemologist? doesn't know if the reality? that he is examining could be considered truth at first approach, he starts what is called [scientific experimentation]?.

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Decipherment is also 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.

Examples of document decipherment:

• [Cuneiform writing]?
• [Harappan writing]?
• [Egyptian hieroglyphic writing]?
• [Indus script]?
• Linear A
• Linear B
• [Maya writing]?
• [Olmec writing]?

Famous documents that have been the subject of actual or attempted decipherment:

• the [Dresden Codex]?
• the [Phaistos Disk]?
• the [Rosetta Stone]?
• the Behistun Inscription

Famous decipherers:

• Michael Ventris
• [Jean Champollion]?
• [Georg Friedrich Grotefend]?
• [Yuri Knorosov]?

See also:

• Archaeology
• Linguistics

External links for ancient language decipherment:

• [Ancient Languages and Scripts]
• http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~fsaber1/language/MysteryCuneiform.html

/Talk