Book review - The Story of Writing, Alphabets, Hieroglyphs & Pictograms, by Andrew Robinson

The Story of Writing - Alphabets, Hieroglyphs & Pictograms, written by Andrew Robinson. 

"Writing is among the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps the greatest invention, since it made history possible. Yet it is a skill most writers take for granted." This is how the introduction in the book starts, and it is a statment that I can agree on. Writing truly is one of our species greatest inventions.

The topics this book discuss are how writing works and the process of desiphering the ancient languages. There is a chapter on each language (Cuneiform, Egyotian Hieroglyphs, Linear B and Mayan Glyphs). There is also a chapter on undesiphered scripts, which includes Linear A and Etruscan scripts. Robinson have also mentioned some living languages, like Chinese and Japanese writings, and the evolution of them. He ends the book with an postscript about the writing in the new millennuim.

The book is richly illustrated with more than 355 illustrations and pictures on the 232 pages, with about 50 of them in colours. It gives you an better understanding into the ancient written languages that is mentioned, when you get to see several different pictures and sketches of them.

The book is well written, and anyone can read it without having any background knowledge about the topics discussed. It is worded in such a way that both those reading it purely for entertainment purposes and those reading it to get an introduction into the field of ancient writings, will find it enlightening. For those interested in Egyptian Hieroglyphs, there is even one small exercise they can do, in order to tray and decipher some modern names written in hieroglyphs. (Which I by the way loved). It is the only exercise in the book, and it is the only thing that I found that could be considered a weakness in the entire book. I would have loved it even more if there were more exercises to do, but it is easy to make your own exercises in order to play with the languages for fun.

I bought this book a while ago when I came across it online and I highly recomend this book to others who are interested in ancient languages and the history of writing. It gives you a good introduction to several of the ancient written languages without having to get a new book for each language. This is one of my absolute favourite books, and it is not on the literature lists of any of the courses I have had so far during my studies. I read it just fun and because I was interested in the topic. All in all, it is a great book to read.  Enjoy.

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Details about the book:

Robinson, A. (2007) The Story of Writing - Alphabets, Hieroglyphs & Pictograms. London, Thames & Hudson Ltd.       ISBN: 9780500286609