The Book of Lost Languages
An Epic Quest to Decipher the Past
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The Book of Lost Languages
ナレーター：
Daniel Harbour
￥3,290で今すぐ予約注文する
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ナレーター：
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Daniel Harbour
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著者：
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Daniel Harbour
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 the Egyptian port city of Rosetta. On the face of the massive boulder, he found three different ancient languages inscribed, all depicting the same message. The Rosetta Stone, as it came to be called, became the key that allowed archaeologists and linguists to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs, finally unlocking one of the world’s most ancient languages.
But Egyptian hieroglyphs are only one of a dozen ancient 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 history: from the 18th century effort by a French clergyman to unlock the Palmyrene and Phoenician languages; to the Imperial court of China’s use of engraved human remains known as “dragon bones” to decipher Old Chinese; to the Russian-led decoding of Mayan glyphs during the Cold War. These intricate, obsessive quests illuminated writings about millennia of human history that had previously gone unread, in the process uncovering the method and style with which our ancestors chose to describe themselves and the world around them.
Featuring puzzles throughout that help readers learn the code-breaking techniques behind this art, The Book of Lost Languages reveals the beguiling artistry behind some of the greatest puzzles ever created. 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.©2026 Daniel Harbour (P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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批評家のレビュー
Daniel Harbour's The Book of Lost Languages tells the gripping tale of the individuals who pushed back the dawn of history by 3,000 years. These were the brilliant decipherers who groped their way into lost linguistic universes using every clue at their disposal, and what makes their story so palpitating is that luck and timing so often played a part in their breakthroughs. Luck and timing, therefore, may be all that separate today's decipherers from unlocking those universes still closed to us.
There is so much more to decipherment than meets the eye of the uninitiated. It’s a gripping science that draws on a dizzying number of disciplines. Its heroes—those who gave our ancient ancestors their voices back—are more like superheroes, with the powers of tenacity, wisdom and encyclopedic knowledge. You really have to suspend disbelief to take it all in. Daniel Harbour does an outstanding job of opening up this world with—as he describes one of his protagonists ‘one eye for enchantment, the other for exactitude.’ It’s an impossible book to put down.
A compelling and authoritative global code-cracking adventure, with tales of historical decipherment so thrilling they set the pulse racing.
A riveting biographical history of decipherment, told with exemplary clarity, and combining all the drama of a political thriller, the intrigue of a detective story, and the challenge of a cryptic crossword.
Daniel Harbour has done a masterful job at bringing decipherment to life. Rich in historical anecdote, with clear linguistic exposition—and entertaining puzzles—he brilliantly conveys the thrill of connecting with the ancient world. Harbour is an immensely knowledgeable guide and he has written a playful, deeply researched book full of fascinating detail that will delight lovers of languages and ancient scripts.
Plato said that writing was dangerous, linguists call it irrelevant, Harbour shows that it is brilliant and strange. Unlocking the secrets of ancient scripts was the work of curious individuals—Irish priests, English buccaneers, French hedgehogs, Chinese exiles—working together and working against each other in a race against time. The pace never lets up as the scripts keep coming, with new solutions still arriving as the book is being written. And Harbour doesn’t just tell us about decipherment, he teaches us how to do it ourselves, with ingenious puzzles that pull us into the story he is telling. Different people crack different codes in a myriad of different ways, but the fundamental logic of writing systems tells us something important about the human condition: faced with the same desires humans find similar solutions.
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