EPISODE · Sep 8, 2025 · 39 MIN
The Tales Ancient Scripts Can Tell, If We could Only Decipher Them, Like the South Arabian Script a Guy Actually Did Decipher Recently, or, Love Languages Lost (and Found)
from This Week in the Ancient Near East · host thisweekintheancientneareast
The recent decipherment of the South Arabian Dhofari script from the first millennium BCE reminds us that we don’t know as much about ancient peoples and languages as we think. And finding a completely new language in a Hittite text shows that they knew a lot more than us, which is sobering, since they didn’t have fancy degrees or iced pecan oat milk lattes.
What this episode covers
The recent decipherment of the South Arabian Dhofari script from the first millennium BCE reminds us that we don’t know as much about ancient peoples and languages as we think. And finding a completely new language in a Hittite text shows that they knew a lot more than us, which is sobering, since they didn’t have fancy degrees or iced pecan oat milk lattes.
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The Tales Ancient Scripts Can Tell, If We could Only Decipher Them, Like the South Arabian Script a Guy Actually Did Decipher Recently, or, Love Languages Lost (and Found)
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