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archaeolibraryologist's review
5.0
Fascinating account of the race to decode Egyptian hieroglyphic writing filled with background history, stories and other linguistic tidbits.
rclairel's review
5.0
For someone obsessed with the story of Champollion as a child and who grew up to be a linguist and language learner/teacher, this book was pure joy. The story of how hieroglyphs were decoded could certainly be written in a short paper, but this is a far more delightful path, full of winding historical tangents, language factoids, and personality paintings. Gosh, I loved it.
besparrow's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
joabroda's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
3.0
There was so much information in this book that I never knew and that, my friends, is the reason I finished it.
Others may not find or mind the annoyances that crept in consistently. I have read this author before and for the life of me I cannot believe I did not remember this about him. Dolnick has a very bad habit of comparing 2 things, and then going totally off topic, IMO. Truly, a good third of the book was more about linguistics of all languages, not about the Rosetta Stone.
What I did learn is that Napoleon, after invading and conquering Egypt, sent a group of savants to study the country and all it's secrets. The story of two men who cracked the code of hieroglyphs was interesting, but there really was no "race" . The English physicist, Thomas Young, identified that finding a name among the script was the key to cracking the code of the words. A French scholar, Jean-François Champollion, is the one who to took it closest to the finish line.
Others may not find or mind the annoyances that crept in consistently. I have read this author before and for the life of me I cannot believe I did not remember this about him. Dolnick has a very bad habit of comparing 2 things, and then going totally off topic, IMO. Truly, a good third of the book was more about linguistics of all languages, not about the Rosetta Stone.
What I did learn is that Napoleon, after invading and conquering Egypt, sent a group of savants to study the country and all it's secrets. The story of two men who cracked the code of hieroglyphs was interesting, but there really was no "race" . The English physicist, Thomas Young, identified that finding a name among the script was the key to cracking the code of the words. A French scholar, Jean-François Champollion, is the one who to took it closest to the finish line.
lucy_mont's review
4.0
Absolutely fascinating to my language-obssessed self, but VERY eurocentric and otherizing of non-Western culture.
lacyp's review
4.0
Felt like it got a slow start to me, but once the "main characters" were introduced, I got stuck in. I appreciated how closely the narrative followed the chronology of the historical events.