$1 Million Reward For Cracking The 5,300-year-old Indus Valley Script Mystery

Daily Galaxy ^ | June 19, 2025 | Ashley Morgan

[Billthedrill]

I got the first row. It’s “Three rings for the Elven kings under the sky” - not liking where this is going...

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Well, considering they had the first plumbing system yet found.... could be!

[ComputerGuy]

Ovaltine. You beat me with that one.

[ScottHammett]

Noah was right!

[PIF]

Each symbol is a complete thought, not a word.

[Bobbyvotes]

Send money! College tuition due!!

[thinden]

Heads up

[nicollo]

I cracked it.



Now give me my money.

[EQAndyBuzz]

The fifth one on the first set is a restaurant menu item. Says double lamb. With tziziki and a red wine. I looked at the other ones and I can make out, Slow children at play.

[BradyLS]

“No Parking” “Trespassers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” “Naan loaves: 13 loaves for 1 rupee.”

[Opinionated Blowhard]

I was thinking the same thing. As soon as AI gets a little smarter and has access to a larger database, all of these ancient language mysteries are going to be solved fairly quickly. This is the perfect task for AI.

[JZelle]

Pretty sure Alabama used those on their sideline last season.

[Dad was my hero]

Geeze, everyone is over thinking it, it says 15 minutes can save you 15%.
sheesh, easypeesy.

[Jamestown1630]

I’m not knowledgeable enough to know exactly what would go into it, but I imagine AI will someday be very useful for this sort of thing.

(I think cryptanalysts - the Friedmans? - finally decided that the Voynich was just nonsense; but maybe AI can have a crack at that someday, too.)

[SunkenCiv]

• Want a Million Dollars? Get Busy Deciphering This Ancient Script. A prize offered by an Indian state leader is intended to shed light on a Bronze Age civilization -- and settle a cultural battle. [02/01/2025]
• $1 Million Prize Offered To Whoever Deciphers This 5,000-Year-Old Script [01/30/2025]
• A million-dollar challenge to crack the script of early Indians [01/17/2025]

[SunkenCiv]

[Jamestown1630]

My decoder ring must be faulty; it says ‘Sling lets you do that!’

[Sawdring]

M.K. Stalin, grand nephew of Josepf Stalin. You don’t see too many Stalin surnames anymore or ever.

[Buttons12]

A bigger problem is the dearth of samples. What do we have for this civilization, besides a lot of seals, stamps, tokens...? You can’t do much translating without subjects and predicates, nouns and verbs.

AI might be very helpful here. Take every known ancient script, every sample. Indus Valley is most likely related to Dravidian but you never know.

A Rosetta Stone doesn’t turn up often enough. Or as I’ve often said, it’d be wonderful if we found someone buried with a library to pass the time in their afterlife — and they had a convenient Etruscan-Latin dictionary, or a Linear A -Greek.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

The Latin-Etruscan dictionary did exist and so we do have the hope of finding it. Maybe in the ruins of Pompeii now that we have possibly learned how to read the charred scrolls.

Maybe other languages too.