8
$\begingroup$

Recently, the first surviving examples of text from the ███████████████e discovered! The unearthed artifacts included a collection of rectangular tablets inscribed in the hitherto unknow█████████████████pt, as well as more mundane objects such as ordinary metal tools and fragmentary pottery. Th█████████████████e a civilization that inhabited Terra from roughly ██████████████████████.e. roughly 1300-1800 years ago████████████████████████████████sappeared without any surviving wri██████████████████████████████ the recent discovery, scientists had only a fragmentary impression █████████████████████████████

Cryptographers have concluded that the ██████████████ed at least two different scripts: one for recording numerals, and another for representing ordinary speech. Thankfully, the numeral system of the ████████████████ed to be easy to decipher, since it was an ordinary base-ten system almost identical to the one in common use today.

The other script has resisted full decipherment, although it appears to be an ordinary abugida; i.e. a script in which symbols represent consonants, with possible small modifications indicating vowels. However, the script occasionally used additional symbols which do not appear to represent consonant-vowel pairs, but perhaps some new sound entirely. Phonetic values of most of the consonants have been determined, but it remains unclear how the vowels were pronounced. However, the consensus view is that there were five distinct pure vowel sounds, with possible additional glides between them.

Below is reproduced a fragment taken from an ordinary tablet. Numerals are as written. The known consonants have been filled in (e.g. M,S,N were pronounced as /m/, /s/, /n/ respectively). The vowels are indicated by the numbers $1,2,3,4,5$. Question marks indicate an unknown consonant, or otherwise unknown symbol.

$$ \begin{array}{|c|c|}\hline M2&11\\ ?&22\\ ?&23\\ S1&26\\ ?4&31\\ N5&33\\ ?&34\\ K3&52\\ N2&69\\ ?5&93\\ M1&116\\ K2&170\\ N3&190\\ H1&290\\ H4&580\\\hline \end{array} $$

Based on these fragments of information, help us decipher the script fill in the question marks!

$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ I think you should call @codewarrior0. $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 29, 2023 at 6:32

0

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.