Special Circumstances

The Decipherment of Linear B by John Chadwick

In the year 1900, archaeologist Arthur Evans discovered several clay tablets at Knossos in Crete with writing in an unknown script. Civilization in Crete (named Minoan after its legendary ruler) was at the time (well before the late Bronze Age) more advanced than Greece. Legend tells of Athens' subjection to King Minos of Crete. The tablets of Minoan writing went through distinct historical changes: there was an early `heiroglypic' writing, then the script matured into pictorial signs called Linear A, which then was replaced by a modified form called Linear B. This book is the story of how the tablets in the Linear B script were read.

The Minoans were not Greek and spoke the Cypriot language and so the established hypothesis was that there was some relation between Linear A and B and the Cypriot script. The Cypriot script did play a role but amazingly enough, an outsider to the field: Michael Ventris, showed using some novel cryptographic techniques (described in detail in this book) that the language in Linear B was in fact a Mycenaean dialect of Greek.

Chadwick an early supporter of Ventris explains the method and the results in accessible detail. Some of Chadwick's early discussion of the background is quite muddled, which is unfortunate since this book is best single source for this information. The decipherment process itself as documented here is an intellectual treat.

Also amazing is the story of the decipherer: Michael Ventris. Born in 1922, he studied to be an architect in London and after earning his diploma worked on the design on new schools. Meanwhile, in 1952 he claimed to have discovered the key to the Minoan script (amazingly the first decipherment of the Mayan script also occured in 1952, see "Breaking the Maya Code"). Since he was an outsider to the field, and his views were contrary to the academic establishment his views were vindicated by his peers only by 1955. Soon after his theory became accepted, while driving home alone one night his car collided with a lorry, and he was killed instantly. He was 34 years old.

This book is a lite version of the book John Chadwick co-authored with Michael Ventris called "Documents in Mycenaean Greek" (Cambridge University Press, 1956).

%T The Decipherment of Linear B
%A John Chadwick
%I Cambridge University Press
%D 1958
%G ISBN: 0521398304
%P 164
%K science, linguistics

Review written: 1999/08/09