John F. Healey

This brings together six separate booklets (produced by the British Museum) into one volume. Six expert academic authors cover cuneiform scripts, Egyptian hieroglyphics, linear B, the early alphabets of the Ancient Near East, Greek inscriptions and Etruscan culture.

Naturally, there is not perfect co-ordination of theme and each booklet has its own orientation but there is little to beat this as an account of writing styles in the Ancient World.

The level of scholarship is very high, at times show more almost too high for the general reader unless one accepts, rightly, that this has immense use as a reference text, but the insights of each academic author into the culture and history of their areas of interest is considerable.

The role of scribes in Mesopotamia, the relationship between hieroglyphics and the later alphabetic system, a remarkable scholarly detective story about the last days of Pylos, the sheer extent of Aramaic and an exhaustive tally of Greek inscriptions are all 'finds' here.

The last section on Etruscan turns into far more than just an account of a language. We are offered a briefing on an entire culture and what we can know of the Oscans to the south through what limited written material is to be found on what has been left behind.

The volume is now well over two decades old and we noted that it was sadly no longer available in the British Museum bookshop but a revised version when all six have been brought up to date (with perhaps a missing booklet on Runes added) would be worth having. show less