Decipherment

Decipherment (in philology) is the discovery of the meaning of texts written in obscure languages, which are almost always ancient.^[1] Decipherment in cryptography refers to decryption.^[2] The term is used sardonically in everyday language to describe attempts to read poor handwriting.^[3] In genetics the term is used to describe successful attempts to understand DNA, which is viewed metaphorically as a text containing word-like units.^[4] Throughout science the term decipherment is synonymous with the understanding of biological and chemical phenomena.

Ancient Languages

In many cases, a multilingual artifact is necessary to facilitate decipherment, the Rosetta Stone being the classic example. Statistical techniques provide another pathway to decipherment, as does the analysis of modern languages derived from ancient languages in which undeciphered texts are written. Archaeological and historical information is helpful in verifying hypothesized decipherments.

Deciphered scripts

• Cuneiform
• Egyptian hieroglyphs
• Kharoshthi
• Linear B
• Mayan
• Staveless Runes
• Cypriot Syllabary

Undeciphered scripts

• Rongorongo
• Indus Valley
• Cretan hieroglyphs
• Linear A
• Byblos syllabary
• Linear Elamite
• Cypro-Minoan syllabary
• Espanca

Famous undeciphered documents

• the Phaistos Disc
• the Rohonc Codex
• the Voynich Manuscript

Important decipherers

Name of Scholar	Script Deciphered
Magnus Celsius	Staveless Runes
Jean-François Champollion	Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Georg Friedrich Grotefend, Eugène Burnouf, and Henry Rawlinson	Old Persian Cuneiform
James Prinsep	Brahmi
Edward Hincks	Mesopotamian Cuneiform
Bedřich Hrozný	Hittite Cuneiform
Vilhelm Thomsen	Old Turkic
George Smith and Samuel Birch, et al.[5]	Cypriot syllabary
Hans Bauer and Édouard Paul Dhorme[6]	Ugaritic alphabet
Wang Yirong, Liu E, and Sūn Yíràng, et al.	Oracle Bone
Michael Ventris, John Chadwick, and Alice Kober	Linear B
Yuri Knorozov and Tatiana Proskouriakoff, et al.	Maya

Cryptography

Decipherment is an action to transform a ciphertext into a plaintext by an authorized party.

Genetics

Decipherment refers to the understanding of the function of genetic material in biological systems.

References

1. Trask, R.L (2000). The Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, p. 82 ("The process of determining the relation between an extinct and unknown writing system and the language it represents. Strictly, decipherment is the elucidation of the script—that is, determining the values of the written characters")
2. Vaudenay, Serge (2006). A Classical Introduction to Cryptography. Springer, p.3. ("Action to transform a ciphertext into a plaintext by an authorized party [emphasis added]")
3. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/decipherment
4. Snustad, D. Peter, et al. (2016). Principles of Genetics. Wiley, p.302
5. http://lila.sns.it/mnamon/index.php?page=Scrittura&id=4&lang=en
6. "Anatomy of a Decipherment", http://images.library.wisc.edu/WI/EFacs/transactions/WT1966/reference/wi.wt1966.adcorre.pdf"