History

Famous Decoded Scripts

Name: Famous Decoded Scripts
Creator: Community curated
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hieroglyphs, Linear B, Maya glyphs, Ugaritic - which ancient script decipherment was the greatest breakthrough?

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Source:Community curated

Updated:4/9/2026

#history #archaeology #scripts #linguistics #ancient

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Script↕	Decoded↕	Decipherer↕	Underlying Language↕	Key Find↕	Known For↕
Egyptian Hieroglyphs	1822	Jean-Francois Champollion	Ancient Egyptian	Rosetta Stone (1799)	Trilingual decree in Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphs unlocked 3,000 years of Egyptian history
Linear B	1952	Michael Ventris	Mycenaean Greek	Knossos and Pylos tablets	Amateur architect proved Linear B was early Greek, 500 years before classical Greek
Maya Glyphs	1950s-1990s	Yuri Knorozov, Linda Schele, David Stuart	Classic Mayan	Dresden Codex and stelae	Revealed Mayan kings, wars, and dates after Thompson's wrong iconographic theory collapsed
Cuneiform (Akkadian)	1857	Rawlinson, Hincks, Oppert, Talbot	Akkadian, Sumerian	Behistun Inscription	Royal Asiatic Society test confirmed decipherment, unlocked Mesopotamian civilization
Old Persian Cuneiform	1836	Henry Rawlinson	Old Persian	Behistun rock inscription	Rawlinson scaled cliff to copy trilingual text of Darius the Great
Ugaritic	1930	Hans Bauer, Edouard Dhorme, Charles Virolleaud	Ugaritic (Semitic)	Ras Shamra tablets	30-character alphabetic cuneiform decoded in months, shed light on Canaanite religion
Hittite	1915	Bedrich Hrozny	Hittite (Indo-European)	Hattusa archives	First known Indo-European language, revealed forgotten Hittite Empire rival to Egypt
Luwian Hieroglyphs	1930s-1970s	Piero Meriggi, Emmanuel Laroche, J.D. Hawkins	Luwian (Indo-European)	Karatepe bilingual	Anatolian script, bilingual Phoenician-Luwian text at Karatepe unlocked final readings
Elamite Cuneiform	1850	Edwin Norris	Elamite (isolate)	Behistun Inscription (column 3)	Third column of Behistun, still a language isolate with unknown relatives