Ebook: GlyphBreaker

1 IN ODYSSEUS'S WAKE 1 1 LOGOS 13 3 THE NEW LABYRINTH 47 4 THE SKEIN OF ARIADNE 65 S "HEAR YE, CRETANS AND GREEKS!" 93 6 THE BATTLE OF NAXOS 119 7 RAPANUI 139 8 TALKI NG BOARDS OF TH E PACI FIC 153 9 ATOP TERE VAKA 167 10 "ALL THE BIRDS ... " 187 11 SURFING THE RONGORONGO 205 Suggested Reading 223 Index 227 A "glyph" (short for hieroglyph) is a sign in a script. And a "breaker" is a person who cracks a script's code. A "glyph­ breaker" is then a decipherer, someone who lets us read the unreadable, that linguistic magician who gives voice to the mute past. Until 1984 no one had been able to read Crete's 3600-year­ old Phaistos Disk, Europe's earliest literature and greatest written enigma. Until 1994 no one could make sense of Easter Island's mysterious Iongorongo writing, Oceania's only script predating the twentieth century. No one had ever deciphered two wholly different historical scripts before. Until now. This is the true story of these two achievements.

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When he successfully deciphered the Rongorongo script of Easter Island --the mysterious system of glyphs in which the island's original inhabitants had recorded their ritual chants and ceremonies--Steven Roger Fischer gained a unique place in the pantheon of glyphbreakers. He is the only person who has ever deciphered not one but two ancient scripts. Both of these scripts yield clues of great historical importance. Fischer's previous decipherment, of a Cretan artifact called the Phaistos Disk, provided the key to the ancient Minoan language and showed it to be closely related to Mycenaean Greek. Contrary to prevailing archaeological opinion, the Minoans were Greeks, and Crete's Phaistos Disk now comprises Europe's oldest documented literature. Fischer's decipherment of Rongorongo shows that it was not merely a mnemonic device for recalling memorized texts, but was physically read and was the vehicle for creative composition. It was thus shown to be the only known indigenous script in Oceania before the twentieth century. Glyphbreaker is the exciting story of these two decipherments, by the man who now must rank as the greatest glyphbreaker of all time.