This page is constructed by layering numerous image objects. Charts of several alphabet systems are printed over Redon’s ephemeral figure, with closed eyes, indicating the unseen assumptions inherent in all physical observation. The small image is Goodman’s Sightseers, depicting the alternative viewpoint of varied perspectives and the reciprocal interaction involved in reading and seeing.

The sightseers in their smart travel gear stand on a remote mountain peak, perhaps in the Himalayas, looking at an expansive landscape. The rams in the foreground look back at the spectator, looking at the picture, reminding that the sightseer becomes part of the landscape, and that the spectator viewing the page, is also another sightseer. This reciprocal effect occurs with reading text and image. As the reader is changed by the books read, the reading also changes the state of knowledge, by incorporating the content into memory and discourse.

The variability of viewpoint is also suggested by the multiple alphabets displayed. Drucker’s authoritative work, The Alphabet Labyrinth, and Marc- Alain Oaknin’s Mysteries of the Alphabet each explores the history of alphabets in the last 2000 years. Both are informed by the histories of twentieth century archeological studies to recovery languages of antiquity. Ernst Doblhofer's Voices in Stone is one such history, which follows Champollion's translation of the Rosetta Stone, and excavations at Babylon, Sumer, Crete, Minos, Knossos and the Indus valley. The drama of Ventris's decipherment of the oldest Greek variant from the Mycenaean islands and the controversy over similarities between Easter Island glyphs and Indus Valley alphabets, are important linguistic discoveries.

The Phaistos Disc from the ruins of Crete (see the page “Paper” P1) is an archaeological enigma that has never been translated. It contains one unique glyph of a head with a Mohawk hair style, reminiscent of the Mississippian Indian or Aztec iconography. Like Latin American and Asian tablets, the text is written in a circular spiral around the disc. Translators might decipher the disc if they look to American or Oriental languages instead of the Mid-eastern language families. The disc may be a record of prehistoric continental discourse.

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