The decoding of Linear B is one of the world's greatest stories: from the discovery of a cache of ancient tablets recording a lost prehistoric language to the dramatic solution of the riddle nearly seventy years later, it exerts a mesmerising pull on the imagination.
But this captivating story is missing a crucial piece. Two men have dominated Linear B in popular history: Arthur Evans, the intrepid Victorian archaeologist who unearthed Linear B at Knossos and Michael Ventris, the dashing young amateur who produced a solution. But there was a third figure: Alice Kober, without whose painstaking work, recorded on pieces of paper clipped from hymn-sheets and magazines and stored in cigarette boxes in her Brooklyn loft, Linear B might still remain a mystery. Drawing on Kober's own papers - only made available recently - Margalit Fox provides the final piece of the enigma, and along the way reveals how you decipher a language when you know neither its grammar nor its alphabet as well as the stories behind other ancient languages, like the dancing-man Rongorongo of Easter Island.
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Riddle of the Labyrinth 9781781251331 Paperback
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- Publication Date:
- 24/07/2014
- Authors:
- Fox, Margalit
- Year Published:
- 2014
- Country of Publication:
- United Kingdom
- Format:
- Paperback
- ISBN:
- 9781781251331
- Number of Pages:
- 352
- Place of Publication:
- London
- Publication Date:
- 24/07/2014
- Publisher:
- Profile Books Ltd
- SKU:
- 9781781251331