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

The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris PDF 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 Based on hundreds of unpublished letters, interviews with survivors, and other primary sources, Andrew Robinson’s riveting account takes the reader through the life of this intriguing and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

The Decipherment of Linear B PDF 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.

The Undeciphered Signs of Linear B

The Undeciphered Signs of Linear B PDF 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.

The Riddle of the Labyrinth

The Riddle of the Labyrinth PDF Author: Margalit Fox
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062228889
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece’s Classical Age, he discovered 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 a mystery. Award-winning New York Times journalist Margalit Fox's riveting real-life intellectual detective story travels from the Bronze Age Aegean—the era of Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Helen—to the turn of the 20th century and the work of charismatic English archeologist Arthur Evans, to the colorful personal stories of the decipherers. These include Michael Ventris, the brilliant amateur who deciphered the script but met with a sudden, mysterious death that may have been a direct consequence of the deipherment; and Alice Kober, the unsung heroine of the story whose painstaking work allowed Ventris to crack the code.

Lost Languages

Lost Languages PDF 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.

Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction

Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction PDF 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.

Linear A & The Decipherment of Minoan Language

Linear A & The Decipherment of Minoan Language PDF 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.

Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology

Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology PDF Author: Rabindranath Tagore
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312200794
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
Unlike previous Tagore collections that focus on a single genre, Dutta and Robinson's anthology offers a full range of Tagore's talents--a play, poems, songs, a novel, selections from his memoirs, travel writings, and essays--in one graceful volume.

The Code Book: The Secrets Behind Codebreaking

The Code Book: The Secrets Behind Codebreaking PDF Author: Simon Singh
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0375890122
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
"As gripping as a good thriller." --The Washington Post Unpack the science of secrecy and discover the methods behind cryptography--the encoding and decoding of information--in this clear and easy-to-understand young adult adaptation of the national bestseller that's perfect for this age of WikiLeaks, the Sony hack, and other events that reveal the extent to which our technology is never quite as secure as we want to believe. Coders and codebreakers alike will be fascinated by history's most mesmerizing stories of intrigue and cunning--from Julius Caesar and his Caeser cipher to the Allies' use of the Enigma machine to decode German messages during World War II. Accessible, compelling, and timely, The Code Book is sure to make readers see the past--and the future--in a whole new way. "Singh's power of explaining complex ideas is as dazzling as ever." --The Guardian
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