The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris

Author: Andrew Robinson
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 0500770778
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Book Description
“Highly readable . . . a fitting tribute to the quiet outsider who taught the professionals their business and increased our knowledge of the human past.”—Archaeology Odyssey More than a century ago, in 1900, one of the great archaeological finds of all time was made in Crete. Arthur Evans discovered what he believed was the palace of King Minos, with its notorious labyrinth, home of the Minotaur. As a result, Evans became obsessed with 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 in the ruined palace. Evans died without achieving his 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 Based on hundreds of unpublished letters, interviews with survivors, and other primary sources, Andrew Robinson’s riveting account takes the reader through the life of this intriguing and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 Ventris finally achieved the breakthrough that revealed Linear B as the earliest comprehensible European writing system.

The Decipherment of Linear B

Author: John Chadwick
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110771723X
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Book Description
The languages of the ancient world and the mysterious scripts, long undeciphered, in which they were encoded have represented one of the most intriguing problems of classical archaeology in modern times. This celebrated account of the decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris was written by his close collaborator in the momentous discovery. In revealing the secrets of Linear B it offers a valuable survey of late Minoan and Myceanean archaeology, uncovering fascinating details of the religion and economic history of an ancient civilisation.

Linear B and Related Scripts

Author: John Chadwick
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 72

Book Description
Explains what is known about the ancient writing systems used by Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece.

The Riddle of the Labyrinth

Author: Margalit Fox
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062228889
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
The discovery and deciphering of Europe’s earliest known written language is recounted with “almost nail-biting suspense” in this prize-winning account (Booklist, starred review). In 1900, famed archaeologist Arthur Evans uncovered the ruins of Knossos, a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece’s Classical Age. The massive discovery included a cache of ancient tablets, Europe’s earliest written records. For half a century, the meaning of the inscriptions, and even the language in which they were written, would remain an enigma. Award–winning New York Times journalist Margalit Fox follows this intellectual mystery from the Bronze Age Aegean to a legendary archeological dig at the turn of the twentieth century, and on to the brilliant decipherers who finally cracked the code in the 1950s. These include Michael Ventris, the amateur linguist who deciphered the script but met with a sudden, mysterious death that may have been a direct consequence of his findings; and Alice Kober, the unsung heroine of the story whose painstaking work allowed Ventris to crack the code. Winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing

The Undeciphered Signs of Linear B

Author: Anna P. Judson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108494722
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Book Description
Ground-breaking analysis of the Linear B undeciphered signs shedding light on the writing system and the activities of its writers.

Linear A & The Decipherment of Minoan Language

Author: Lee Buchwalder
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781735187402
Category : FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDY
Languages : en
Pages : 88

Book Description
The language of the Minoan people has remained an enigma for more than a century since their ancient civilization was discovered. The script that records it, known as Linear A, has long been thought to use the same sounds and symbols as its successor-Linear B. After Linear B was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris, and was found to represent an archaic form of Greek, the language of the earlier Linear A script continued to defy all those attempting to read it. A recent insight regarding synonym-parallels in ancient Minoan texts has now illuminated their meaning for the first time. This book guides the reader through the Linear A decipherment process and provides English translations for many of the most important Minoan artifacts. So enter the labyrinth as Europe's first great civilization is finally given voice after three and a half thousand years, and discover how its people have actually been speaking to us all along.

Glyph-Breaker

Author: Steven R. Fischer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780387982410
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
After successfully deciphering the Rongorongo script of Easter Island, Steven Roger Fischer gained a unique place in the pantheon of glyphbreakers: he is the only person to have deciphered not one but two ancient scripts. Both of these scripts yield clues of great historical importance. Fischers previous decipherment, of a Cretan artefact called the Phaistos Disk, provided the key to the ancient Minoan language and showed it to be closely related to Mycenaean Greek. Fischer's decipherment of Rongorongo shows that it was not merely a mnemonic device for recalling memorised texts, but was actually read and used for creative composition. This is the exciting story of these two decipherments, by the man who now must rank as the greatest glyphbreaker of all time.

Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Andrew Robinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199567786
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
"Starting with the origins of writing five thousand years ago, with cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, Andrew Robinson explains how these early forms of writing developed into hundreds of scripts including the Roman alphabet and the Chinese characters. He reveals how the modern writing system we take for granted - including airport signage and electronic text messaging - resemble ancient scripts much more closely than we think." --Book Jacket.

Lost Languages

Author: Andrew Robinson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500288160
Category : Extinct languages
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Undeciphered scripts have long tantalized the public, whether it's the possibility of hearing the voices of ancient peoples or the puzzle solver's taste for the challenges posed by breaking codes. Here, Andrew Robinson investigates the most famous examples, beginning with the stories of three great decipherments: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya glyphs, and the Minoan Linear B clay tablets. He then covers the important scripts that have yet to be cracked, such as the Etruscan alphabet and Rongorongo from Easter Island.

The Greek Search for Wisdom

Author: Michael K. Kellogg
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1616145765
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Book Description
The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said that all of Western philosophy was "but a series of footnotes to Plato." By the same token, one could argue that all of Western civilization is but an extension of the ancient Greek cultural legacy. The Greeks invented tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, philosophy, and democracy. They also made remarkable advances in science, medicine, and mathematics. In the author’s view, what ties this wide-ranging intellectual ferment together is a restless search for wisdom. The author looks at ten outstanding examples of Greek wisdom, offering fresh and engaging portraits of the epic poets (Homer, Hesiod); dramatists (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes); historians (Herodotus, Thucydides); and philosophers (Plato, Aristotle) against the background of Greek history. In each case he asks what the author has to tell us— regardless of genre—about our place in the world and how we should live our lives. By surveying some of the highest peaks of ancient civilization, the author argues that we gain perspective on the historical terrain that lies below. This book presents an eloquent and convincing case that a study of the Greek classics, as Gustave Flaubert explained, makes us "greater, wiser, purer."