Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Combining exhaustive excavation of British and French archives with eclectic biographical elements, [this] valuable new book explains in unique detail . . . the twists and turns behind the perpetually fascinating decipherment."
---Andrew Robinson, British Museum Magazine"Rarely have I seen the false starts and blind alleys, firm beliefs and 180-degree recalibrations, exhilaration and loneliness of pioneering thought captured so well. . . .
If The Riddle of the Rosetta won’t be coming to screens anytime soon, its achievement is no less admirable."
---Maxwell Carter, Wall Street Journal"Arguably the most meticulous and thoroughgoing account of the work of Young and Champollion. . . . The dazzling scholarly nimbleness of Champollion and Young is richly illustrated throughout the book — that is no myth, but it emerges as something a little more human."
---Elizabeth Frood, The Spectator"Buchwald, a historian at California Institute of Technology, and writer Josefowicz put a decade’s worth of work into this book, and it shows. . . . Buchwald and Josefowicz deliver an account that sometimes seems as if in real time, describing the blind alleys, intuitions, and thorny debates that surrounded the scholars’ investigations. . . . Fans of Egyptology, cryptography, and languages will enjoy this exploration of the ancient past." * Kirkus Reviews *
"A gloriously detailed reconstruction . . . this past intellectual world is dazzlingly brought to life by Buchwald and Josefowicz."
---Dmitri Levitin, Times Literary Supplement"This volume is a
tour de force of scholarly research and thorough analysis."
---Hilary Forrest, Ancient Egypt"The story of the Stone and its role in the translation of the hieroglyphs has been told many times, but never so well as in Buchwald and Josefowicz’s new book. . . . [
The Riddle of the Rosetta is] a sophisticated, exciting, and polished piece of scholarship.”"
---Anthony Ossa-Richardson, Erudition and the Republic of Letters"Elegantly written and dazzlingly erudite. . . . [
The Riddle of the Rosetta] offers a fascinating account of an often told story that never loses its allure."
---Cecilia Hurley, History of Humanities
