The decipherment of linear B

by John Chadwick, 1920-

Book, 1990

Status

Available

Call number

P1035 .C5

Publication

Publisher Unknown

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.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Tid
There have been several scientific "detective stories" : the unravelling and discovery of DNA by Crick and Watson; the work that led to Darwin's "Origin Of Species"; the cracking of the "Enigma Code" at Bletchley Park in WWII. This book describes something no less engaging, even though it has much
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less associated 'glamour' than those others, but also arguably less impact on the academic world too.
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John Chadwick's account of his friend's - the brilliant and gifted Michael Ventris - intuitive leaps that led to the decipherment of the Bronze Age Linear B script (assisted by Chadwick himself), is a highly technical and academic work. Yet it is written so that the lay person can follow the process of thought, the suspicions leading to new intuitions, the underlying assumptions about what Linear B was, and the startling discovery of what it REALLY is.
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If you like a detective story, you are fascinated by scripts and cyphers, or you just enjoy good history well-told, then this is a book for you.
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LibraryThing member Libraryish2
A fascinating account of Michael Ventris's lifelong dedication to solving an academic/linguistic puzzle.
LibraryThing member castiron
An interesting look at how a writing system was deciphered.
LibraryThing member ambrose_rex
What appeared to be a dry read instead brought alive the amzaing personality of Michael Ventris.
LibraryThing member P_S_Patrick
Linear B, a mysterious unknown language written on clay tablets, was first unearthed from palace ruins on Crete during archaological digs in the late 19th Century. This here is the intriguing story of Linear B and its decipherment by Michael Ventris in the 1950s, written by his close collaborator
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John Chadwick.

We are told how Ventris as a 14-year old school boy first encountered the tablets during a talk at the British Museum by their elderly discoverer Arthur Evans, who had himself dug most of them up decades before. Becoming hooked on the problem of deciphering them Ventris worked away on them throughout his tragically short life, corresponding with various academic experts in ancient languages from around the world. Many false leads on the decipherment were followed by both Ventris and the international experts prior to the correct solution, with everyone believing it was anything but Greek until it was conclusively proven so.

The difficulty in decipherment lay in the fact that Linear B did not resemble any known alphabet, and still does not. Indeed it was not an alphabet as such, but it was discovered that each character represented a syllable, with around 90 characters making up the complete repertoire. It was also not known which spoken language which these unknown syllables represented, and no equivalent of the Rosetta stone existed to make the job easier with the same text written in different languages side by side. Thus the task of decipherment involved a lot of clever ingenuity, and the mind of Ventris, who was something of a prodigy with languages from an early age.

When Ventris finally deciphered Linear B, he showed that the syllables made up Greek words. This was a shock, as the Greek language already had a known alphabet, and Linear B bore no resemblance to it – firstly in that each character was a syllable and not an individual consonant or vowel, and secondly that there was no explanation as to why a second way of writing the same spoken language would have come about. Also, the characters in Linear B did not look anything like the characters of the Greek alphabet. The explanation seems to be that Linear B was a precursor script to record the same spoken language, which was eventually replaced by the alphabet now known as Greek. The earliest Linear B tablets come from around 1450 BC, which predates the oldest known writing in the ancient Greek alphabet by around 600 years, and Plato by over a 1000 years.

This is an interesting account for several reasons – it shows the excitement and the actual intellectual process of solving a very difficult problem, and the subject matter is intrinsically interesting from an historical and cultural point of view. I had not previously taken a lot of interest in languages compared to other academic areas, however this book is contagious in its excitement of discovery and the fascination of ancient languages.
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LibraryThing member Lukerik
If you want to read about the decipherment of Linear B then this book is the motherlode. The author was a Bletchley Park code-breaker who worked with Ventris on the decipherment, so this is a first hand account. The central part of the book where he describes the breakthrough reads almost like a
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memoir. Some (most) of the linguistics went over my head, but even if the fine detail of the argument is missed you can still follow it and the story.

He also gives an overview of Mycenaean studies pre-decipherment and discusses the implications of what was found written on the tablets. It was still a controversial topic when this book was published and I particularly enjoyed how he would dismiss the opinions of other experts as 'absurd'.

A quick note on editions. There are two, the second being published in 1967 with corrections and a postscript so get that one unless you're a first edition junkie.
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LibraryThing member EricCostello
Slightly dry, but thorough, account of how the "Linear B" language of ancient Crete (and certain parts of nearby Greece proper) was decoded by a part-time linguist, in conjunction with a professor of linguistics. Even though the book is supposedly pitched at a "popular" audience, according to the
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first chapter, it does get very technical toward the later third of the book, as the author describes the particular methods used to break into the language. David Kahn's account in "The Codebreakers" is somewhat easier to digest, though Kahn had the advantage of writing a decade later. For specialists only, in my view, or those keen on Greek language or history.
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LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey
Interesting! I knew, vaguely, that someone had figured out how to read the clay tablets found in various areas of Greece and vicinity. This book gives the details. Honestly, it seems to have been as much luck as anything else - why did they assign those particular syllables to those signs, which
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when combined (and read very carefully) make words that sound like Greek? That aside, the complex process of tying symbols to meanings to syllables is fascinating, if a bit beyond me. The discussion of linguists around the world working on aspects of this (these) question(s) is interesting in itself, as well. Definitely worth reading, though I doubt I'll reread.
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LibraryThing member nillacat
Fascinating! A brief biography and description of Ventris, a most admirable man; long descriptions of the decipherment process well written for a lay audience, an outline of such inferences regarding Mycenaean economy and culture as may be made from the limited material together with the reflexes
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of the age detectable in Homer; and a post-script hinting at progress in the succeeding 25 years. Especially interesting for the sketch of the fierceness of academic classics studies in the first half of the 20th c.
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LibraryThing member markm2315
Great story. This is the non-technical version, but it is pretty technical.

Original publication date

1958

Barcode

34662000984291
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