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

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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 Based on hundreds of unpublished letters, interviews with survivors, and other primary sources, Andrew Robinson’s riveting account takes the reader through the life of this intriguing and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 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

Get Book Here

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

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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 Riddle of the Labyrinth

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

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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 Mycenaean World

The Mycenaean World PDF Author: John Chadwick
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521290371
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
John Chadwick summarizes the results of research into Mycenaean Greece.

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

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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.

Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore

Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore PDF Author: Rabindranath Tagore
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521590181
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
A selection of some 350 letters spanning Nobel prize-winning writer Rabindranath Tagore's entire life - the first to be available to English readers.

The Last Man who Knew Everything

The Last Man who Knew Everything PDF Author: Andrew Robinson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781805110248
Category : Discoveries in science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Sudden Genius?

Sudden Genius? PDF Author: Andrew Robinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199569959
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Genius and breakthroughs appear to involve something magical. Andrew Robinson looks at what science does, and does not, know about exceptional creativity, and applied it to the stories of ten breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, including Curie's discovery of radium and Mozart's composing of The Marriage of Figaro.

Lost Languages

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

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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.

India: A Short History (A Short History)

India: A Short History (A Short History) PDF Author: Andrew Robinson
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 0500771952
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
India’s unfolding story, from the ancient Hindu dynasties to the coming of Islam, from the Mughal Empire to the present day India has always been a land of great contradictions. To Alexander the Great, the country was a place of clever naked philosophers and massive armies mounted on elephants – which eventually forced his army to retreat. To ancient Rome, it was a source of luxuries, mainly spices and textiles, paid for in gold—hence the enormous numbers of Roman gold coins excavated in India. At the height of the Mughal empire in 1700, India boasted 24 percent of the world economy—a share virtually equal to Europe’s 25 percent. But then its economy declined. Colonial India was known for its extremes of wealth and poverty, epitomized by the Taj Mahal and famines, maharajas and untouchables, and also for its spirituality: many-armed Hindu gods and Buddhist philosophy, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. India: A Short History places as much emphasis on individuals, ideas and cultures as on the rise and fall of kingdoms, political parties and economies. Anyone curious about a great civilization, and its future, will find this an ideal introduction, at times controversial, written by an author who has been strongly engaged with India for more than three decades.