Title: Glyphbreaker
First published: 1997
Description: When he successfully deciphered the rongorongo script of Easter Island - the mysterious system of glyphs in which the island's Polynesian inhabitants had recorded their ritual chants and songs - 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 historical scripts.

Both of these scripts yield clues of great cultural 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 showed that it was not merely a mnemonic device for recalling memorized texts but was physically read and was the vehicle for creative composition. Rongorongo is thus the only known indigenous script in Oceania before the twentieth century. Filled with accounts of his remarkable journeys and the cultures Fischer encountered, Glyphbreaker is the exciting story of these two decipherments, by the man who must now rank as the greatest glyphbreaker of all time.
Subjects: Extinct languages, Rongorongo script, Phaistos Disk, Alfabetten, Schrift, Entzifferung, Ontcijfering, Minoische cultuur, Geschichte
LC classification: P901 .F57 1997