Decoding antiquity: Eight scripts that still can't be read

New Scientist ^ | 27 May 2009 | Andrew Robinson

[BGHater]

[BGHater]

Ancient Languages chicken scratch ping.

[JoeProBono]

[Charles Henrickson]

Eight scripts that still can't be read

Nine, if you count Obambi's birth certificate.

[Lockbar]

On my trip to London a number of years ago, on of my highlights was to see the original Rosetta Stone on display at the British Museum. Now if the Brits would only return the Elgin Marbles back to the Greeks from whom they were really stolen

[razorback-bert]

That one is simple.

Obama is the greatest and so on.

[shibumi]

I’m pretty sure I know what the first lines of that script say:

Moe: Mah Hah?

Curly: Ah Hah! Raz-banyah Yatchee benefucci a tinnimah coronji?

Moe: Yaskee-taskee a tiba gibbah sahee.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Some of these scripts are not likely to contibute much to our knowledge of world civilization, but Linear A, Etruscan, Meroitic, and Indus could tell us a lot about the early Minoan, Roman, and Egyptian civilizations, and everything about Indus Valley civilization.

[JoeProBono]

[OneWingedShark]

...What?

[JoeProBono]

Uhh ehh uh ah ah
Ting tang walla walla bing bang
Uhh ehh uh ah ah
Ting tang walla walla bing bang

[DannyTN]

I’ve got more than 8 scripts I wrote myself that even I can’t read.

[Lancey Howard]

Hmmm. That tells a story about a flying saucer....

[Lancey Howard]

LOL, Zero with a pancake on his head...!

[count-your-change]

Probably an ancient tax form, if so it will remain undeciphered forever.

[JoeProBono]

[DesertRhino]

Oh my lord,,,i decoded some of it!!
It says, “beware the rise of communism. A great nation under attack by,,,,”

Im going to have to work on it more,,its some african name starting with an “O”.

[jongaltsr]

I can't read all of it but what I understand from this script is that it goes something like this -
There once was a beautiful woman from Nantucket.....

[JoeProBono]

[djf]

Not surprisingly, alot of the earliest tablets and scripts have been shown to be pretty mundane - 24 bushels of wheat, 14 cows, that sort of thing. Basic accounting and contracts.