While records of Hungarian writing in Latin script date back one thousand years in Hungary, there is also contemporaneous or even earlier evidence of writing in Hungarian and unknown languages from the entire territory of the Carpathian Basin, written in different scripts. For obvious reasons, these writings are of particular interest for the lay audience, but they are also of great significance for scientific research. This increased publicity and closer cooperation between researchers is indeed needed, as the field is developing at a rapid pace. Today, there are at least three distinct types of the runiform script known in Hungary alone, and every year, four or five new inscriptions are guaranteed to emerge.

The Institute of Hungarian Research organised a conference on 12–13 December 2019, the lectures of which are included in this volume. Our original purpose was declaredly bold: everyone should come together, and everyone who has contributed important new findings to our knowledge base should now think together. But this work is in no way complete: we intend to continue and organise further conferences, further research and further volumes. We have so many common tasks ahead, in linguistic deciphering, research methodology, documentation, and even popularisation.