# The Tales Ancient Scripts Can Tell, If We could Only Decipher Them, Like the South Arabian Script a Guy Actually Did Decipher Recently, or, Love Languages Lost (and Found) Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/this-week-in-the-ancient-near-east-3467259/the-tales-ancient-scripts-can-tell-if-we-could-only-decipher-them-like-the-south-arabian-script-a-guy-actually-did-decipher-recently-or-love-languages-lost-and-found Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/this-week-in-the-ancient-near-east-3467259/the-tales-ancient-scripts-can-tell-if-we-could-only-decipher-them-like-the-south-arabian-script-a-guy-actually-did-decipher-recently-or-love-languages-lost-and-found.md Podcast: [This Week in the Ancient Near East](https://stenobird.com/podcast/this-week-in-the-ancient-near-east-3467259) Published: 2025-09-08T11:24:15+00:00 Episode link: https://thisweekintheancientneareast.podbean.com/e/the-talesancient-scriptscantellif-we-could-only-decipher-them-like-the-south-arabianscript-aguy-actually-did-decipherrecentlyorlovelanguageslostand/ Audio file: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/u3bw2j89esu7s5ey/podcast_122_-_9_7_25_1235_PM6ezdc.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/this-week-in-the-ancient-near-east-3467259/episodes/the-tales-ancient-scripts-can-tell-if-we-could-only-decipher-them-like-the-south-arabian-script-a-guy-actually-did-decipher-recently-or-love-languages-lost-and-found Duration seconds: 2382 ## Resource The recent decipherment of the South Arabian Dhofari script from the first millennium BCE reminds us that we don’t know as much about ancient peoples and languages as we think. And finding a completely new language in a Hittite text shows that they knew a lot more than us, which is sobering, since they didn’t have fancy degrees or iced pecan oat milk lattes. ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/this-week-in-the-ancient-near-east-3467259/episodes/the-tales-ancient-scripts-can-tell-if-we-could-only-decipher-them-like-the-south-arabian-script-a-guy-actually-did-decipher-recently-or-love-languages-lost-and-found/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/this-week-in-the-ancient-near-east-3467259/the-tales-ancient-scripts-can-tell-if-we-could-only-decipher-them-like-the-south-arabian-script-a-guy-actually-did-decipher-recently-or-love-languages-lost-and-found.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.