Concise and very well written
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This slim volume elegantly and concisely describes the process by which Michael Ventris deciphered the Linear B script. The story is worth telling, not least because Ventris was an amateur scholar - working as a professional architect while pursuing this work as a hobby in his spare time. It was written by Ventris' close collaborator, John Chadwick, shortly after the decipherment and this proximity to the events described allows Chadwick to convey to the reader some of the excitement of discovery.
The book was prepared for the general reader so does not require any great specialist knowledge. As such, it is heartily recommended to anyone with an interest in learning more about the topic. The story is made poignant by the tragic death in a road accident of Michael Ventris in 1956, a couple of years after the main events described. Chadwick's own sense of loss can be seen through the text.
My copy dates from 1961 so lacks the later postscript but, such was the quality of the original work by Ventris and Chadwick, the content remains relevant today in all its essentials.
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A popular account by an expert
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The decipherment of this ancient Mycenaean script from about 1400 BC was one of the great mystery stories of the 20th Century. John Chadwick is an expert in archaic Greek, who assisted Michael Ventris in deciphering the thousands of clay tablets discovered in the ruins of Knossos and Pylos. Ventris's demonstration that the language was an archaic form of Greek rocked the world of Ancient Greek history. In this book, Chadwick gives a popular account of the decipherment, somewhat light on the technical details of Ventris's discoveries, but with a good section on what the translated records show of Mycenaean society. The book was written in the 1950s but has a modern postscript which shows that most of the original findings still stand today.
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