The Decipherment of the Indus Script

By Jessica Lorraine Scott (Dunn)

The Decipherment of the Indus Script - written by the very author who deciphered the Voynich Manuscript - presents the first unified, corpus-wide reading system for the inscriptions of the Indus Valley Civilization by integrating two complementary lines of research: (1) structural correspondences between the Vinča and Indus sign systems, and (2) a lexicon of Indus signs and their meanings. Building on the comparative graphemic analysis established in Preliminary Observations on Symbol Correspondence Between the Vinča and Indus Sign Systems, this volume demonstrates that the Indus script is neither entirely logographic nor alphabetic, rather it is a hybrid abugida system using vowels, conjuncts, and full lexical words which follow a specific layered system of interpretation.

Through systematic testing across the Mahadevan corpus, the decipherment reconstructs a stable set of root meanings, dependent rules, and sign-class relationships that remain consistent across the corpus inscriptions.

Together, these findings establish the Indus script as a coherent inscriptional system encoding a structured lexicon with deep Indo-Iranian affinities, independent of later Vedic retrojection. By unifying comparative palaeography with internal morphological analysis, this work offers the first decipherment capable of explaining both the diversity and the stability of the Indus corpus, providing a replicable, falsifiable framework for future research.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H4QQDX7C
• ISBN13: 9798180582133
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.5" x 11.0"