Voices in Stone — Ernst Doblhofer

An unreadable message is a torment, and unread messages from he past continue to tease at the minds of scholars until they are deciphered. No challenge is too great. Unknown scripts, unidentified languages, these add to the mystery, to the labor, and in the end, to the splendor of the achievement. It is this absorbing and exciting story of incomparable detection that Ernst Doblehofer, himself as expert, has to tell- from the cuneiform to runic, from the Sphinx to the land of Hatti, from the antiquity of Persia and mystery of Easter Island and the disc of Phaistos to Creto-Myceneanan Linear B. Scrolls engulfed by the lava of Herculaneum, clay tablets buried beneath the sands of Mesopotamia, stelae on the the banks of the Nile- so many signs and riddles of civilizations wandering in the maze of history, where, in the worlds of Velery, "the ghosts of huge ships sail laden with riches and knowledge." Intended for the layman, but written with the expert care and accuracy based on advice of specialists from major universities throughout the world, Voices in Stone presents a comprehensive picture of the whole magnificent sweep of ancient scripts and languages.