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gajeam's review
4.0
A fun book with so, so many analogies. Just how many analogies? Imagine a middle school teacher giving a lesson on similes, metaphors, and analogies. Now imagine that teacher assigns his twenty-student class a five-page essay on the decryption of hieroglyphs that includes as many figures of speech as possible. The summation of all their essays would not even include half the analogies that Dolnick does in "The Writing of the Gods"
mijtje's review
informative
medium-paced
4.75
This book describes the challenges faced when trying to translate hieroglyphs, and how the two main characters that worked to understand them: Young and Champollion. It is a nice read, with a lot of fun facts and anecdotes that make this book much more than a historical review of the translation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Probably the most fun non-fiction book I’ve read in a while.
Probably the most fun non-fiction book I’ve read in a while.
robinwalter's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.25
This book would have scored 4.5 or 4.75 if only it had cut to the chase sooner. It was longer than it needed to be to cover the advertised theme because the author got bogged down in the beginning providing a plethora of largely superfluous details about Napoleon's Egyptian campaign. Had the book started with "Napoleon's force discovered the Rosetta Stone" and carried on from there, it would have been an absolute ripper.
Once it DID get to the chase, the book soared. The wealth of information was fascinating, the analogies and comparison helpful and often amusing, as in this favourite explaining how we subconsciously use context to aid in processing spoken speech:
Once it DID get to the chase, the book soared. The wealth of information was fascinating, the analogies and comparison helpful and often amusing, as in this favourite explaining how we subconsciously use context to aid in processing spoken speech:
Primed by thoughts of tangerine trees and marmalade skies, we hear a girl with kaleidoscope eyes and not a girl with colitis goes by
Extra marks for the clear-eyed candour about the gap between the mythologised splendor of Ancient Egypt and its much more brutal and humdrum reality. The abundance of caveats throughout the book were welcome signs of the author's intent to present "just the facts", and that he did so in an informative and and at times entertaining manner is to his credit.
susannadkm's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Absolutely fascinating. Dolnick takes the reader through the systematic deciphering of hieroglyphic writing--how a name was discovered here, a word there--until most of its secrets were revealed.
He does this while maintaining the mystery until the final chapters of the book--who wins the race, and are hieroglyphs an alphabet or words or ideas or what? Why are there too many different characters to be an alphabet and far too few to represent all words? For someone who knew next to nothing before about hieroglyphs, it was so fun to discover them step by step with the early code breakers.
I loved how Young and Champollion had to use a range of clues--from knowledge of other dead languages like Coptic to ancient lists of rulers, the Chinese writing system, and as many hieroglyphic texts as they could get their hands on. I hadn't realized how the Rosetta stone was only an initial key and so much more was needed.
While all the rabbit-trail detours were interesting, I think they detracted from the Rosetta stone story. I think a tighter focus on hieroglyphs and Egyptology would have made an even better book.
I heard about this book from Emily Oster's newsletter. I read the ebook.
He does this while maintaining the mystery until the final chapters of the book--who wins the race, and are hieroglyphs an alphabet or words or ideas or what? Why are there too many different characters to be an alphabet and far too few to represent all words? For someone who knew next to nothing before about hieroglyphs, it was so fun to discover them step by step with the early code breakers.
I loved how Young and Champollion had to use a range of clues--from knowledge of other dead languages like Coptic to ancient lists of rulers, the Chinese writing system, and as many hieroglyphic texts as they could get their hands on. I hadn't realized how the Rosetta stone was only an initial key and so much more was needed.
While all the rabbit-trail detours were interesting, I think they detracted from the Rosetta stone story. I think a tighter focus on hieroglyphs and Egyptology would have made an even better book.
I heard about this book from Emily Oster's newsletter. I read the ebook.
catbooking's review
4.0
Super watered down, there is only about enough information for a long article. That said, it was entertaining and not too difficult to understand so a pretty solid use of free time.
mishat's review
adventurous
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
It’s not easy to write about intellectual history, about the gradual insights in a brilliant mind, but this book made it exciting. I listened to the audiobook and expected to be lost quickly but that didn’t happen. Really great explanations and analogies to show you why the process was hard, what was taken for granted at the time that had to be overcome, why each insight mattered. He also talked a lot about deciphering secret codes and how that is similar, which was fun. Lots of tangents and asides but I thought they were interesting. And I feel like I learned a lot about Egypt too. Great read if you’re interested in Egyptology or languages.
snommers's review
4.0
Fascinating telling of the history of how the Rosetta Stone was deciphered, focusing on the tow main protagonists, an Englishman and a Frenchman.