Decipherment

In philology, decipherment is the discovery of the meaning of texts written in ancient or obscure languages or scripts.

Ancient languages
In a few cases, a multilingual artifact has been 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 (Decipherment of rongorongo)
 * Indus script
 * Cretan hieroglyphs
 * Byblos syllabary
 * Linear A
 * Linear Elamite
 * Cypro-Minoan syllabary
 * Espanca
 * Numidian language

Undeciphered texts

 * Phaistos Disc
 * Rohonc Codex
 * Voynich Manuscript