eli5: How did philologists (people who study ancient languages) learn to decipher ancient texts, if there was no understandable translation available upon discovery?

Question

To me it seems like this would be similar to trying to learn to read Chinese with absolutely no access to any educational materials/teachers.

In: 5

Answer 1

they investigate it using historic record, example, theres this weird simbol that they name the “kakapo” symbol, the don’t know what they mean, so they start looking for it in different texts, so they find it in a plants book, then in a medicine book, so they deduce it hss something to do with a medicinal plant, but which one?, so they look where that symbol sppesrs the most and find coincidences for the plant depicted in the symbol and in a possible ilistration, snd thats how they kniw the kakapo symbol means peyote