Description
An immersive journey into the art of decipherment and the lost past that emerges when ancient scripts are brought back to life
For centuries, the world's earliest writing stood unread. Only through the work of decipherers did their languages begin to speak again, revealing lives that were long forgotten.
The Book of Lost Languages is part detective story, part history, part linguistic adventure. It traces the epic journeys of decipherment, from the international strife that unearthed the Rosetta Stone, key to Egypt's hieroglyphs, to the drunken wager that unsealed Old Persian, and from the malaria cure that revealed China's most ancient writing to the proof by chocolate that Mayan writing had been unlocked behind the Cold War's Iron Curtain. From earliest victories to latest findings, Harbour chronicles the remarkable mental feats that have restored forgotten worlds.
As it moves through these discoveries, the book celebrates the minds behind them – their strengths and quirks, their brilliance and pettiness, their inexplicable flashes of insight. It reveals the astonishing engine that drives decipherment: when we unravel forgotten scripts, we connect across millennia with the minds that created them. Through these connections, we have extended our knowledge of written history by thousands of years.
The result is an exhilarating story of people and politics, dogma and doubt, genius and ingenuity, and of the beguiling artistry behind some of the greatest puzzles ever created.
Accessibility Information
Support for non-visual reading
- No accessibility features offered by the reading system, device or reading software are disabled or otherwise unusable with the product
- Has alternative text descriptions for images
Visual adjustments
Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified (font, spacing, colors)
Navigation
- Page list to go to pages from the print source version
- Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation
- All or substantially all textual matter is arranged in a single logical reading order
- Content is enhanced with ARIA roles to optimize organization and facilitate navigation
- Purposes of all links are made clear
Rich content
Language tagging provided
Additional accessibility information
- WCAG level AA
- WCAG v2.2 compliant
- Accessibility request contact
Product details
| Published | 08 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 496 |
| ISBN | 9781526645999 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Illustrations | 2 x 8pp colour plates |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
