The Riddle of the Labyrinth (50 page)

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Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

xvi
likened to that of Rosalind Franklin
: Andrew Robinson,
Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts
(London: Peter N. Nevraumont/BCA, 2002a), 16; Thomas G. Palaima and Susan Trombley, “Archives Revive Interest in Forgotten Life,”
Austin American-Statesman
, Oct. 27, 2003, A9.

      
sitting night after night at her dining table
: Brann (2005), 4, speaks of AEK's doing this.

xvii
“IBM machines”
: AEK postcard to ELB, April 4, 1950, ELB Papers, PASP.
“I don't like the idea of getting paid”
: AEK to JFD, Feb. 18, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.

xxviii
“In the words of Ventris”
: Robinson (2002a), 91.

      
“a feeling for the fitness of things”
: AEK to HAM, Sept. 8, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.

xx
“There is no thread”
: Robinson (2002a), 95.

PROLOGUE: BURIED TREASURE

4
On March 23, 1900
: See, e.g., Sir Arthur Evans,
The Palace of Minos: A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos
, vol. 4, part 2 (London: Macmillan, 1935), 668.
thirty local workmen
: Joan Evans,
Time and Chance: The Story of Arthur Evans and His Forebears
(London: Longmans, Green, 1943), 329. The book's author was the younger half sister of AE.
on a knoll bright with anemones and iris
: AE diary entry, March 19, 1894, quoted in J. Evans (1943), 312.
his workmen's spades turned up fragments
: For accounts of the early finds at Knossos, see, e.g., J. Evans (1943), 330ff.; Horwitz (1981), 95ff.; and J. L. Myres, “The Cretan Exploration Fund: An Abstract of the Preliminary Report of the First Season's Excavations,”
Man
1 (1901), 4–7.

5
the historic basis of the enduring myth of the labyrinth
: See, e.g., A. J. Evans, “The Prehistoric Acropolis of Knossos,”
Annual of the British School at Athens (ABSA)
, no. 6, session 1899–1900 (London: Macmillan, [1901]), 33.

      
“such a find,” Evans wrote
: AE letter to Sir John Evans, November 1900, quoted in J. Evans (1943), 335.

      
In his first season alone
: J. Evans (1943), 332–33; Myres (1901), 5.
On March 30
: Evans (1899–1900), 18.
On April 5
: Ibid.

6
more than a thousand tablets
: Myres, “The Cretan Exploration Fund,” 5.

7
a special font, in two different sizes
: Evans (1899–1900), 58, note 2; Horwitz (1981), 131.
“Of all the decipherments of history”
: David Kahn,
The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing
(New York: Macmillan, 1967), 917.

CHAPTER ONE: THE RECORD-KEEPERS

13
the most visible Bronze Age ruins there could be dated
: Horwitz (1981), 63.
the distinguished archaeologist Flinders Petrie
: See, e.g., Joseph Alexander MacGillivray,
Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth
(London: Pimlico, 2001), 78ff.

14
Schliemann dug fruitlessly for several years
: Horwitz (1981), 61.
the authenticity of some of his finds
: For a précis of the doubts cast on Schliemann's work, see, e.g., MacGillivray (2001), 57ff.

15
“the later Greeks understandably concluded”
: John Chadwick,
The Mycenaean World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 55.
Digging down into the circle
: MacGillivray (2001), 60ff.

16
“It seemed incredible that
[
such
]
a civilisation”
: Arthur J. Evans, “Pre-Phoenician Writing in Crete, and Its Bearings on the History of the Alphabet,”
Man
3 (1903), 52.
Perhaps the Mycenaeans had written on perishable materials
: See, e.g., Evans (1909), 3.
hints that they had written on sturdier stuff
: A list of Mycenaean objects known as of 1894 to contain writing-like symbols, including seal-stones, pottery, engraved gems, inscribed building blocks, and clay pendants, appears in Evans (1894), 346.

      
unearthed a clay amphora
: Ibid., 273. This and the vase-handle discovery are credited to Tsountas in Evans (1903).
a stone vase whose handle was engraved
: Arthur J. Evans, “Primitive Pictographs and a Prae-Phoenician Script, from Crete and the Peloponnese,”
Journal of Hellenic Studies
14 (1894), 273.
the remains of a Bronze Age wall
: MacGillivray (2001), 93.
In the early 1880s
: Ibid., 95.
dismissed as “masons' marks”
: Evans (1894), 281.
had a symbol in common
: Ibid., 282–83.

17
His father, Sir John Evans
: John Evans was knighted in 1892.

      J. Evans (1943), 302.
Evans the Great
: Horwitz (1981), 6.
“helped to lay the foundations”
: Ibid., 9.

18
“a bit of a dunce”
: J. Evans (1943), 93; also quoted in Horwitz (1981), 17.
On New Year's Day 1858
: J. Evans (1943), 93.
Arthur's much younger half sister
: Joan Evans (1893–1977), a noted antiquarian and art historian, was the daughter of John Evans by his third wife, Maria Millington Lathbury, born when her father was about seventy. Joan Evans was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1976.
“John Evans wrote in his wife's diary”
: J. Evans (1943), 94.
John Evans married a cousin
: Ibid., 104.
Arthur won prizes in natural history
: J. L. Myres, “Arthur John Evans, 1951–1941,”
Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society
, 3:10 (Dec. 1941), 941; J. Evans (1943), 145.
graduating with first-class honors in 1874
: D. B. Harden,
Sir Arthur Evans, 1951–1941: A Memoir
(Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1983), 10.

      
he published his first scholarly article
: Arthur John Evans, “On a Hoard of Coins Found at Oxford, with Some Remarks on the Coinage of the First Three Edwards,”
Numismatic Chronicle
11 (1871), 264–82.
“Little Evans, son of John Evans the Great”
: Horwitz (1981), 6.

19
He traversed the wild countryside
: See, e.g., Ibid., 40.
the first of his two books on the Balkans
: Arthur J. Evans,
Through Bosnia and the Herzegóvina on Foot during the Insurrection, August and September 1875: With an Historical Review of Bosnia, and a Glimpse at the Croats, Slavonians, and the Ancient Republic of Ragusa
(London: Longmans, Green, 1876).
“Mind where you travel!”
: Quoted in J. Evans (1943), 194.
In September 1878, Evans married
: Ibid., 214.
now best remembered for his fiercely held views
: See, e.g., MacGillivray (2001), 52ff.

20
Evans had horrified his father
: J. Evans (1941), 216.
after seven weeks in a local jail
: J. Evans (1943), 258.
In 1884, Evans was appointed keeper
: Harden (1983), 9.
A diminutive man of barely five feet
: Horwitz (1981), 1, puts Evans's height at five foot two; MacGillivray (2001), 34, writes that he “never grew much beyond four feet.”
he nonetheless bristled
: J. Evans (1943), 202.
“I don't choose to be told”
: Evans (1876), 312; also quoted in J. Evans (1943), 202.
“But . . . it is easy to see how valuable”
: Evans (1876), 312; also quoted in J. Evans (1943), 202.
“His short sight”
: J. Evans (1943), 144.

21
“like a jackdaw down a marrow bone”
: Quoted in Horwitz (1981), 22.

22
the five months he and Margaret spent
: Horwitz (1981), 64.
the widely accepted view of Greek history
: This position was advanced by the historian George Grote in his seminal work,
A History of Greece
, published in twelve volumes between 1846 and 1856. For a discussion of Grote's influence, see, e.g., MacGillivray (2001), 57ff.

      
and with it, recorded history
: Of the world's roughly six thousand languages, only a minority have writing systems, and many cultures from antiquity to the present day have relied entirely on oral tradition as a means of transmitting their own histories. However, orally transmitted texts almost inevitably undergo change—often considerable change—over time, through constant retelling. See, e.g., Margalit Fox, “Linguistic Reanalysis and Oral Transmission,”
Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts
13:3 (1984), 217–38.
“at a comparatively low level of civilization”
: Chadwick (1976), 180.
“is a network of well-organized kingdoms”
: Ibid.
“When Homer describes a letter”
: Ibid., 182.

23
his father and two colleagues had unearthed Stone Age implements
: See, e.g., Horwitz (1981), 7ff.; MacGillivray (2001) 30ff.
“that human beings had lived on this earth”
: MacGillivray (2001), 31.
at a Roman site in Trier
: Horwitz (1981), 28.
“Such a conclusion”
: Arthur J. Evans,
Scripta Minoa: The Written Documents of Minoan Crete with Special Reference to the Archives of Knossos
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), 3.

24
“The discoveries of Schliemann”
: Evans (1903), 51.
Evans had bought sixty acres
: Horwitz (1981), 128.
“from the ancient name of the heath below”
: Ibid., 76.
In 1890, Margaret had been diagnosed
: MacGillivray (2001), 82.
In March 1893, Margaret Evans died
: Horwitz (1981), 77.
“For the rest of his life he wrote on black-edged paper”
: Ibid.

25
completed the next year, and Evans moved into it alone
: J. Evans (1943), 306.
red or green jasper, carnelian, or amethyst
: MacGillivray (2001), 74.
“a series of remarkable symbols”
: Evans (1894), 274.
“not a mere copy of Egyptian forms”
: Ibid., 371.
Schliemann's bead gems
: Ibid., 272.

26
“To Crete,” Evans wrote
: Evans (1909), 10.
Crete's earliest known inhabitants
: Evans (1894), 275.
“It was clearly recognized by the Greeks themselves”
: Ibid., 354.
Evans paid his first visit to Crete
: J. Evans (1943), 310.
“In the evening some excitement”
: Quoted in Ibid., 311.

27
“It is impossible to believe”
: Evans (1894), 300.

28
“that the great days of the island”
: Evans (1909), 10.
“a clue to the existence of a system”
: Quoted in Horwitz (1981), 81. Evans made the announcement in November 1893, at a meeting of the Hellenic Society in London. See also Evans (1909), 9ff.
“an elaborate system of writing did exist”
: Evans (1894), 274.
“linear and quasi-alphabetic”
: Ibid.
“a kind of linear shorthand”
: Ibid., 367.
“Of this linear system too”
: Ibid., 363.

29
“One of the great islands of the world”
: Homer,
The Odyssey
, Book 19, lines 172ff., translated by Robert Fitzgerald (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1963), 359.
tou Tseleve he Kephala: MacGillivray (2001), 92.
The reasoning, which Kalokairinos accepted
: Ibid., 93.
In the early 1880s, William James Stillman
: Ibid., 95ff.