Do you ever look at antiquities in a museum and want to know how those symbols carved into rocks or painted on ceramics convey language?  This course will review the basics of some ancient writing systems, including Cuneiform (the earliest writing), Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Mayan script. We’ll see how the Roman alphabet that we all use is just one of many ways that language can be written. The course will be lecture and discussion, and it will include interactive problem solving with lots of examples and exercises.

Optional exercises should take an hour or less each week.  .