Decipherment of Linear B
Desciframiento del lineal B
- Date
- 1952 · confidence high
- Place
- London, United Kingdom (Ventris) / Knossos, Crete (tablets)
- Credited to
- Michael Ventris, John Chadwick; Alice Kober (earlier analysis); Arthur Evans (discovery at Knossos, 1900)
- People
- 👤 Alice Kober1906–1950👤 Arthur Evans1851–1941👤 John Chadwick1920–1998👤 Michael Ventris1922–1956
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Ventris, an amateur architect, used Kober's grids to show that Linear B from Crete and Mycenae was archaic Greek, not Minoan. It pushed written Greek back 500 years and revealed the Mycenaean palace bureaucracy.
Coordinates of London, where Ventris announced the decipherment on the BBC in 1952. Minoan Linear A remains undeciphered.
What it led to
- Reading of Mycenaean administration (15th-12th centuries BCE)
- Recognition of the Mycenaeans as Greeks
- Decipherment methods without a bilingual text
Built on
- Archaeological discovery of Mycenaean civilization1874-1876
- Evans's excavations at Knossos
- Pylos tablets (Blegen, 1939)
Made possible
- Mycenaean philology