Abstract

This contribution explores modern and traditional approaches to the decipherment of ancient writing systems. It surveys methods used by paleographers and epigraphers and state-of-the art applications of computational linguistics, such as models based on neural networks. It frames the contextual problems scholars encounter in dealing with ancient codes, the situations and preconditions of the unknown codes, their idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, and the potential solutions afforded by both traditional and novel methods of investigation.