Width: 16.000 cm (large tiles)
Height: 15.500 cm

M&ME 1802,5-8.1-3

Enlightenment: Ancient scripts

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Enlightenment: Ancient Scripts

Languages and translation

During the Enlightenment, scholars wished to answer questions such as how language evolved and where and when writing was invented. To do this, they began to compare modern laguages and work out how they had developed from ancient texts recorded in inscriptions and manuscripts.

Arabic, Chinese and Japanese were living languages that provided material for these studies. East India Company officers, for example, compared Sanskrit with Greek, Latin, and German and found that they shared a common root with Persian. This led to new translations of ancient Persian texts.

Through these discoveries, the study of inscribed objects ceased to be a collector's hobby and became the science of philology - the study of language. The decipherment of previously untranslatable scripts also helped people uncover the histories of many earlier cultures.