The Man Who Deciphered Linear B
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First discovered in 1900, on clay tablets among the ruins of the Palace of Minos at Knossos in Crete, Linear B, Europe's oldest writing, remained a mystery for over fifty years. In 1936 Michael Ventris - then a fourteen year-old schoolboy - visited an exhibition at the Royal Academy where the tablets were displayed and heard Sir Arthur Evans, the archaeologist who had discovered them, confirm that the tablets had not yet been deciphered. Ventris was a talented linguist and decided then and there that he would be the one to find the key to Linear B.
Dubbed the ?Everest of archaeology?, the decipherment was all the more remarkable because Ventris was not a trained classical scholar but an architect whose first, youthful, introduction to Linear B became a lifelong obsession. In 1952 he finally decoded the symbols, finding that its signs did not represent an unknown language as previously believed, but an archaic dialect of Greek, more than 500 years older than the Greek of Homer.
Dubbed the ?Everest of archaeology?, the decipherment was all the more remarkable because Ventris was not a trained classical scholar but an architect whose first, youthful, introduction to Linear B became a lifelong obsession. In 1952 he finally decoded the symbols, finding that its signs did not represent an unknown language as previously believed, but an archaic dialect of Greek, more than 500 years older than the Greek of Homer.
Extent: 168 pp
Format: Paperback
Publication date: 2012-02-20
Size: 21.5 x 13.5 cm
ISBN: 9780500289983
Press Reviews
Current World Archaeology
The Times Literary Supplement
Independent
The Economist
About the Author
Andrew Robinson has written more than 25 books on the arts and sciences. They include Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts, India: A Short History and Earthshock, which won the Association of Earth Science Editors Outstanding Publication Award, plus Earth-Shattering Events . A regular contributor to such magazines as Current World Archaeology, History Today, The Lancet, Nature and Science, he has also been literary editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement and a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge.
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