Table of Contents
List of Illustrations vii
List of Tables xii
Notes on Contributors xiii
Preface xvii
1 Now You See It; Now You Don't! The Disappearance of the Linear A Script on Crete John Bennet 1
2 The Disappearance of Writing Systems: Hieroglyphic Luwian J. David Hawkins 31
3 The Obsolescence and Demise of Cuneiform Writing in Elam Jeremy Black† 45
4 Increasingly Redundant: The Growing Obsolescence of the Cuneiform Script in Babylonia from 539 BC David Brown 73
Postscript. Redundancy Reconsidered: Reflections on David Brown's Thesis Jerrold Cooper 103
5 Script Obsolescence in Ancient Italy: From Pre-Roman to Roman Writing Kathryn Lomas 109
6 Whatever Happened to Kharosthi? The Fate of a Forgotten Indic Script Richard Salomon 139
7 On the Demise of Egyptian Writing: Working with a Problematic Source Basis Martin Andreas Stadler 157
8 The Last Traces of Meroitic? A Tentative Scenario for the Disappearance of the Meroitic Script Claude Rilly 183
9 The Phoenix of Phoinikeia: Alphabetic Reincarnation in Arabia M. C. A. Macdonald 207
10 The Small Deaths of Maya Writing Stephen D. Houston 231
11 The Death of Mexican Pictography Elizabeth Hill Boone 253
12 Late Khipu Use Frank Salomon 285
13 Disappearance of Writing Systems: The Manchu Case Giovanni Stary 311
14 Revelatory Scripts, 'the Unlettered Genius', and the Appearance and Disappearance of Writing John Monaghan 323
15 History without Text Chris Gosden 335
16 Writing and its Multiple Disappearances John Baines 347
Index 365
