Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
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HIEROGLYPHIC WRITING
69
of mighty potentates and powerful empires for ages after they had passed away. Its decipherment is one of the romantic achievements of modern science, and a fine example also of international scholarship. No results rewarded the attempted decipherments of the savants of the sixteenth century, that is the Italians G. P. Valeriano (1556) and M. Mercati (1589),
PETE
SUNES
HEAR
1540747
THANKMSU-15 HEROTIK SPORCENT
Fig. 35-The "Rosetta Stone"
and of the seventeenth century with the learned Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, but in the eighteenth century Warburton guessed the existence of "alphabetic" characters, and De Guignes guessed that some of the signs