The Picts, the most powerful nation in northern Britain for some 500 years, mysteriously disappeared from contemporary records in the ninth century. All that remains of the language they spoke are a few fragments in the names of places or people. Their most enduring memorial is a unique system of symbols carved on stone monuments, engraved on objects of silver and bronze and scratched on the walls of caves - symbols whose interpretation has been as elusive as that of the Egyptian hieroglyphs before the discovery of the Rosetta stone. In this important book, Dr Cummins seeks to unravel the code behind these mystifying symbols by following up a variety of historical and archaeological clues. In doing so he opens up a deeper understanding of who the Picts were and the world in which they lived. This book is a must-have for anyone interested in the Picts and fascinated by the perennial mysteries of the Dark Ages.