The Man Who Deciphered Linear B
The Story of Michael Ventris
Andrew Robinson
|
| ‘A welcome and sympathetic account of Ventris’s life. . . well illustrated and admirably clear’ | | – The Spectator |
| ‘Excellent: well researched and clearly presented. . . Robinson holds the reader all the way. . . compelling reading’ | | – The Times Literary Supplement |
‘A wonderful book …
a fascinating tale of a brilliant and complicated individual … the definitive biography of Ventris’ | | – Journal of Hellenic Studies |
More than a century ago, in 1900, one of the great archaeological finds of all time was made in Crete and began one of the epic intellectual stories of the modern era: the search for the meaning of Linear B, the mysterious script found on clay tablets amid the ruined palace of Knossos. Arthur Evans, the discoverer of the palace, died without achieving this objective, and it was left to the enigmatic Michael Ventris to crack the code in 1952.
This is the first book to tell not just the story of Linear B but also that of the young man who deciphered it. Based on hundreds of unpublished letters, interviews with survivors and other primary sources, Andrew Robinson’s riveting account takes the reader through the life of this intriguing and contradictory man. Stage by stage, we see how he finally achieved the breakthrough that revealed Linear B as the earliest comprehensible European writing system, more than half a millennium older than the Greek of Homer.
The man who conquered what has been dubbed ‘the Everest of Greek archaeology’ was a complex and private figure, an amateur in classical scholarship who trained as an architect. His tragic death in a car crash at the age of thirty-four only heightens the fascination of the brilliant intuitions that enabled him to succeed in resolving an ancient mystery where all the experts had failed.
Also of interest:
The Story of Decipherment
From Egyptian Hieroglyphs to Maya Script
Reading the Maya Glyphs |
|  |  | | | | ISBN 0500510776 | | ISBN-13 978-0500510773 | | | | 21.5 x 13.5 cm | | Hardback | | 168pp | | with over 40 illustrations | | First published 2002 | | | | £12.95 | | | |  | | | | 
|
|
For news of our new and forthcoming
publications please click here |
