The Riddle of the Labyrinth (55 page)

CHAPTER NINE: THE HOLLOW BOY

203
plus one younger schoolmate
: Leonard Cottrell, “Michael Ventris and His Achievement,”
Antioch Review
25:1 (1965), 14.

204
“Did you say the tablets”
: Robinson (2002), 21.

205
Edward Francis Vereker Ventris
: Marjorie Dent Candee, ed.,
Current Biography Yearbook
(New York: H. W. Wilson, 1958), 566.
born in Wheathampstead
: Cottrell (1965), 13.

      
On his father's side, Ventris was descended
: Robinson (2002), 16.
His paternal grandfather
: Robinson (2002b), 16.

206
“Overshadowed by illness”
: Ibid.
numbered among her friends
: Ibid., 29; Palaima, Pope, and Reilly (2000), 7.
Edward Ventris suffered from tuberculosis
: Robinson (2002), 17.
He attended a boarding school in Gstaad
: Ibid.; Cottrell (1965), 14.
French, German, and the local Swiss German dialect
: Robinson (2002).
he bought and devoured
Die Hieroglyphen: Palaima, Pope, and Reilly (2000), 7.
much has been made of his prodigious ability
: See, e.g., Cottrell (1965), 14;
A Very English Genius
(2002).

207
the “critical period” for language acquisition
: See, e.g., Margalit Fox,
Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 125ff.
“How do you come to be so expert”
: Robinson (2002), 117.

208
“I heard it all”
: Jean Overton Fuller to Andrew Robinson, May 2002, MV Papers, PASP.

209
Jung, Fuller wrote, “had complicated matters”
: Ibid.
“I think they rather thought me”
: MV to LV, World War II–era letter dated only “Wednesday night” [1942], MV Papers, PASP.
a middling student
: Robinson (2002);
A Very English Genius
(2002).
night after night, after lights-out
:
A Very English Genius
(2002).
From about 1932 on
: Ibid.

210
The couple formally divorced
: Robinson (2002), 26;
A Very English Genius
(2002).

      
“I count myself extraordinarily fortunate”
: Quoted in Robinson (2002), 28–29.

211
“Dear Sir,” begins one letter
: MV to AJE, Easter 1940, MV Papers, PASP.

212
He would discreetly neglect to tell the editors
: Cottrell (1965), 19.
forced to withdraw Michael from Stowe
: Robinson (2002), 30;
A Very English Genius
(2002).
He wrote to his mother's friend Marcel Breuer
: Robinson (2002), 30.
Ventris enrolled there in January 1940
: Ibid., 31.
“She had already lost her brother”
: Ibid.
“The coroner's verdict”
: Ibid., 40.

213
To the end of his life, Robinson added
: Ibid.
He tore up two drafts
: Ibid., 32.
“Dear Sir: I am enclosing an article”
: MV to
American Journal of Archaeology
, Sept. 22, 1940, MV Papers, PASP.

214
“close to worthless”
: Palaima (n.d.), 17.
she did so as an act of mercy
: Ibid.
a classmate a few years older than he
: Robinson (2002), 42.
“It looks as if, in the ordinary way”
: Ibid., 42–43.

215
Ventris and Lois married
: Ibid., 43.
“the nicest present”
: Quoted in Robinson (2002b), 45.
Called up in the summer of 1942
: Robinson (2002), 43.
“Darling Lois”
: MV to LV, World War II–era letter dated only “Scarborough, Sunday” [probably late 1942], MV Papers, PASP.

217
“My knowledge is gradually getting on”
: MV to LV, World War II–era letter dated only “Wednesday night” [1942], MV Papers, PASP.
it interested him far more than actual flying did
: Cottrell (1965), 18.

      
“It's a desk job, really”
:
A Very English Genius
(2002).
“on one occasion he horrified his captain”
: Cottrell (1965), 18–19.

218
because of his foreign-language prowess
: Robinson (2002), 47.
a daughter, Tessa, had been born
: Ibid.
He also met with Myres
: Ibid.; JLM to MV, April 23, 1948; MV to JLM, May 6, 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
Ventris and Lois graduated with honors
: Robinson (2002), 57.

219
“Dear Sir John”
: MV to JLM, dated only “Monday night” [1948], MV Papers, PASP.

220
he was immensely pleased
: See, e.g., JLM to MV, March 7, 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
“The man who may decipher Linear B”
: Cottrell (1965), 29.

CHAPTER TEN: A LEAP OF FAITH

221
In September 1949
: Robinson (2002b), 73.
“He was,” she wrote
: Prue Smith,
The Morning Light: A South African Childhood Revalued
(Cape Town: David Philip, 2000), 239.
“a strange architectural drawing aid”
: Ibid.

222
“with instant accuracy”
: Ibid.
working feverishly on the script during lunch breaks
: Robinson (2002b), 74.
“It is hard to see”
: Ibid.
translating the replies as needed
: Ventris (1988), 32.
At his own considerable expense
: Ibid.
“I have good hopes”
: Ibid., 108.

223
Then, in the summer of 1950
: Robinson (2002b), 76.
made out handsomely in the stock market
: Ibid., 74.
soon quit his job
: Ibid., 77.

224
Work Note 1
: Ventris (1988), 135ff.
Ventris independently replicates
: Ibid., 143.

      
his own first attempt on paper at a phonetic grid
: Ibid.
Ventris had previously built a three-dimensional “grid”
: Robinson (2002b), 81.

225
“must be regarded as a failure”
: Pope (1975), 164.
“a suspicious . . . official asked him”
: Robinson (2002b), 83.
the first established signary for the script
: Bennett (1951), 82.

227
His signary looked much like this
: As depicted here, the signary includes slight modifications based on later findings. After Bennett (1951), 82; Robinson (2002a), 88.

229
“represent the values which seem the most useful”
: Ventris (1988), 315.
Even in his third grid
: Pope (1975), 164.

230
“I must say I was slightly disappointed”
: MV to JLM, Jan. 28, 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
“alternative name-endings”
: MV to AEK, Good Friday [March 26], 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
including
and
: Pope (1975), 166.
“which on the face of it”
: MV to JLM, Aug. 28, 1951, MV Papers, PASP.
a conference on the ancient Near East
: MV to JLM, Sept. 11, 1951, MV Papers, PASP.
“I was frankly rather disappointed”
: MV to JLM, Oct. 5, 1951, MV Papers, PASP.

231
The words unique to Knossos included
: Adapted from Kober (1946), 274.
Perhaps, Ventris conjectured in early 1952
: MV to JLM, Feb. 28, 1959, MV Papers, PASP.

232
“only a little adjustment”
: Ibid.
“the theory that Minoan could be Greek”
: Ventris (1940), 494.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: “I KNOW IT, I
KNOW
IT”

233
“all your help in the B volume”
: JLM to AEK, Oct. 26, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
the published book gave scant indication
: Evans (1952), vi. Myres's acknowledgment reads as follows: “Thanks are due . . . to Dr. Alice Kober, of Brooklyn College, New York, who came twice to Oxford to study the unpublished texts, revised the Vocabulary, contributed to the Inventory of tablets according to their contents, read the proofs, and contributed many valuable suggestions. She was ready to go also to Crete, if the Candia Museum had been restored so as to make the original tablets accessible.”
between about the seventh and the second centuries B.C
.: Pope (1975), 123.

234
A handful of Cypriot characters looked like Linear B signs
: Adapted from Cowley (1927).

235
“had no results”
: AEK to JLM, Sept. 18, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.

236
Evans tried substituting Cypriot values
: Evans (1935), 799.
“those who believe that the Minoan Cretans”
: Ibid., note 3.

243 do-we-lo-se: Pope (1975), 170.
did not appear at the ends of Linear B words
: Ibid.

244
Ventris pinpointed additional words
: The examples are from Ventris (1988), 337ff.
“In the chains of deduction”
: Ibid., 327.

245
“These may well turn out”
: Ibid.
“Lois Ventris, whom we always called Betts”
: Smith (2000), 240. In her memoir, Smith spells Lois's nickname “Bets,” but it is clear from Ventris's own correspondence (e.g., MV to ELB, May 31, 1955, PASP) that the correct spelling was “Betts.”

CHAPTER TWELVE: SOLUTION, DISSOLUTION

247
after reworking his script several times
: Robinson (2002b), 106.
The broadcast, as Andrew Robinson notes
: Ibid., 104–5.
high, light, cultured, melodious
:
A Very English Genius
(2002).
“For half a century
, [
the
]
Knossos tablets”
: Michael Ventris, “Deciphering Europe's Earliest Scripts,” text of BBC Radio talk, first broadcast July 1, 1952. In Ventris (1988), 363–67.

248
Chronologically, the Greek dialect they contained
: Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, “Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives,”
Journal of Hellenic Studies
73 (1953), 90.

249
Even Bennett and Myres remained unpersuaded
: Robinson (2002b), 106.
“a frivolous digression”
: Ventris (1988), 327.
He got in touch with Myres
: Robinson (2002b), 111.
“He sat as usual in his canvas chair”
: Chadwick (1958), 69.

250
“I think we must accept the fact”
: Robinson (2002b), 111.
“Dear Dr. Ventris”
: JC to MV, July 13, 1952; in Ventris (1988), 352–53.

251
in the Greek of Homer's time, “the” was a rarity
: Chadwick (1958), 70.
playing the dogged Watson
: Robinson (2002b), 14.
“Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives”
: Ventris and Chadwick (1953), 84–103.
Another, published in the British journal
Antiquity: John Chadwick, “Greek Records in the Minoan Script,”
Antiquity
108 (1953), 196–206; includes “A Note on Decipherment Methods,” by Michael Ventris.
They also began work on a massive book
: Michael Ventris and John Chadwick,
Documents in Mycenaean Greek: Three Hundred Selected Tablets from Knossos, Pylos and Mycenae with Commentary and Vocabulary
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956).

      
“had attacks of cold feet”
: Chadwick (1958), 70.
“Every other day I get so doubtful”
: Quoted in Ibid.
“I feel it would be appropriate”
: Quoted in Robinson (2002b), 117.