The Riddle of the Labyrinth (57 page)

At the
New York Times
, my editors, William McDonald, Jack Kadden, and Peter Keepnews, and my Obit comrades, Dennis Hevesi, Doug Martin, Paul Vitello, and Bruce Weber, make it a joy and a privilege to come to work each day. Baden Copeland of the
Times
's graphics department provided valuable assistance, and the
Times
's graphics artist Jonathan Corum created this book's original maps.

Two remarkable women deserve more credit than I can ever adequately express. The first, my steadfast agent, Katinka Matson, is to be commended for the creativity and diplomacy with which she handled this book from start to finish. And my wonderful editor, Hilary Redmon, who like me has known and loved the Linear B story since girlhood, has been the only conceivable steward for this project from the very beginning to the very end. Hilary's assistant at Ecco, the supremely capable Shanna Milkey, deserves a medal for repeatedly talking me down from the ledge whenever the words “We need this image done over in high resolution” seem destined to send me fleeing there.

Suet Yee Chong, who is responsible for the elegant design of this book, juggled its welter of strange fonts with the skill of a decipherer, as did the production editor, Dale Rohrbaugh. Tom Pitoniak provided the masterful copyediting, and Nancy Wolff prepared the index.

Last but far from least, my deepest thanks go to the writer and critic George Robinson, to whom this book is dedicated, my boon companion these twenty-five years and more.

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use your e-book reader's search tools.

Page numbers in
italics
refer to illustrations.

Akkadian writing, 106

American Journal of Archaeology
(AJA)
, 114, 120, 134, 149, 154, 163, 170, 212, 213

Arabic language, 46, 60

Archaeology
, 256

Architects' Journal
, 258–59, 260–61

Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA), 212, 213, 214, 218

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 17, 20, 24, 75

Barber, E. J. W.,
Archaeological Decipherment
, 73, 104, 106–7

Barthélemy, Jean-Jacques, 49

BBC Radio, “Deciphering Europe's Earliest Scripts,” 247–49, 262–63

Bennett, Emmett L. Jr., 179–82

and Knossos inscriptions, 180–82, 187, 191

Kober's correspondence with, 160, 174, 178, 180–81, 182, 227

and Linear B signary, 182, 192, 227

and Pylos inscriptions, 179, 180–82, 191, 196, 225, 227

The Pylos Tablets
, 225, 227

and
Scripta Minoa
, 223

and Ventris, 194, 223, 249, 260

Blegen, Carl W., 146–48, 179–81, 192, 252–54

Bliss, Charles K. (Karl Blitz), 98

Blissymbolics, 98–102, 120, 230

Bloomfield, Leonard, 113

boustrophedon writing, 61,
61

Brann, Eva, 91–92, 112

Breuer, Marcel, 206, 210, 212

Bronze Age civilizations:

Aegean,
1
, 7, 14, 23

Cretan, 4, 16, 32, 78

Cypro-Minoan script in, 114

Greek, 21, 23, 38, 54, 78, 251, 270

of Mycenae, 13, 16, 251, 269–70, 271

secrets unlocked, 270–71, 285

writing of, 27, 71

Burton, Sir Richard, 19

Cambodia, 58

Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, 115

Chadwick, John, 15, 22

The Decipherment of Linear B
, xvii, 251

Documents in Mycenaean Greek
(with Ventris), 251, 258, 262

“Evidence for Greek Dialect in Mycenaean Archives” (with Ventris), 251, 255–56

The Mycenaean World
, 277, 281, 283, 284–85

and Ventris, 80, 207, 249–51

Champollion, Jean-François, 81, 166–67

and Coptic language, 51, 53, 101

and Egyptian hieroglyphs, 51–53, 101, 167

Egypt Under the Pharaohs
, 51

and Ramses cartouche, 52,
52
, 232

Cherokee syllabary, 57,
57–58

Chinese language, 106, 122, 123, 197

Chinese writing, 42, 57, 60

Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur, and “Dancing Men,” 56, 62–64, 93–94

Coptic alphabet, 46

Coptic language, 51, 53, 101

Cottrell, Leonard, 217, 220

Cowley, A. E., 98, 234

Cox, Oliver, 217, 218, 221, 260

Cretan writing, 64, 68, 74, 94, 241

Crete:

Bronze Age in, 4, 16, 32, 78

Evans's visits to, 26–27

and Greece, 26, 281

Greek-Turkish hostilities in, 26–27, 30–31

Heraklion Museum in, 151, 162

map,
66

Minos as ruler of, 4–5, 77

numerical system of, 69–70,
70

pictograms, 28, 34,
35
, 98

stones with hieroglyphs, 25–26,
25
, 27–28, 30, 31, 36, 38, 74

towns in, 232

Ventris's travel to, 230–31

writing system adapted by colonizers, 241–46, 248

Cypriot script, 233–35,
234–35
, 238, 242–43

Cypro-Minoan script, 114, 233

Cyrillic letters, 58

Daedalus, 5, 262

Dancing Men cipher, 56,
56
, 62–64,
62
,
63
, 93–94,
93
, 124

Daniel, John Franklin, 131, 151–56

and
AJA
, 114, 149, 154–56

and Cypro-Minoan script, 114, 233

death of, 175, 177, 179, 267

Kober's correspondence with, 115–16, 142, 152, 155, 158, 160–62, 172

and Linear B tablets, 151

and U Penn, 152–55, 160–61, 167–69, 175

decipherment, 43–45, 46–53

character count, 57–58

as collaboration, 193–94, 262

diagnostic tests in, 54–56

direction of writing, 60–62, 97

Kober's achievements in, xvi–xvii, xviii–xix, 263–67

of patterns, 106–8, 120, 125–27, 232, 263

random guesswork in, 120, 125, 160, 214, 223, 229–30, 266

of unknown language and script, 44–45,
44
, 54, 58, 166, 263

Ventris's solution, 241–46, 253–55

Doll, Christian, 77

Duncan, Isadora, 77

Easter Island, 45, 56

Edgerton, Franklin, 161

Egyptian hieroglyphs, 42, 46–53

cartouches in, 49–50,
49
,
50
,
52
, 81

Champollion's decipherment of, 51–53, 101, 167

demotic script in, 47

determinatives in, 53, 81

phonetic characters in, 48, 53

pictograms in, 48, 53

English language:

grid for,
165

and Roman alphabet, 235

Erman, Adolf,
Die Hieroglyphen
, 206–7

Etruscan alphabet, 43, 61

Etruscan language, 45, 103, 159, 225, 240, 241, 244

Evans, Arthur,
11

as archaeologist, 4, 16, 17, 78, 79–80

assumptions made by, 78–82, 125, 147–48, 256

in the Balkans, 18–20

birth and childhood of, 17–18

control held by, 74–75, 96–97, 117, 130, 252

in Crete, 26–27

death of, 82, 96–97

and exhibit of tablets, 203–4, 255

in Greece, 21–23, 25–26

houses of, 76–77,
76

and iconicity, 53–54, 74, 79–82

and Linear A script, 6, 36

and Linear B decipherment, 8, 46, 60, 62, 64, 93, 123, 129, 183, 229, 235, 241, 269, 271, 285

myopia of, 20–21, 285

and Palace of Minos, 4, 5, 32–33, 77–78, 96, 120, 209

professional distractions of, 75

Scripta Minoa
, 74, 94, 117, 225

tablets discovered by, xx, 3, 4, 5–6, 9, 33, 143, 193

Through Bosnia and the Herzegóvina on Foot
, 19, 20

writing sought by, 15–16, 17, 23–24, 25–29, 31, 33–34, 271

Evans, Dame Joan,
Time and Chance
, 18, 20

Evans, Sir John, 17, 33

Evans, Margaret Freeman, 19–20, 24–25

Forbes, William T. M., 158–59, 266–67

Franklin, Rosalind, xvi

Fuller, Jean Overton, 208–9

Gabo, Naum, 206, 210, 214

García Ramón, J. L., 271, 276

Georgiev, Vladimir, 196

Graf, Patricia, 191

Greece:

Bronze Age in, 21, 23, 38, 54, 78, 251, 270

Classical Era, 22, 23, 95, 251, 254, 282

and Crete, 26, 281

Dark Age, 22

earliest writing of, 33

mainland (map),
146

Greek:

alphabet, 22, 27, 43, 45, 46, 60–61, 234, 241, 248, 285

dialect in Linear B, 244–45, 248

pre-Hellenic words in, 95–96

spelling rules of, 242–43

“the” in, 250–51

Green, Fritzi Popper, 111

Gropius, Walter, 206

Guggenheim Foundation, 112, 113–14, 116, 141, 143–45, 155, 267

Hagia Triada, Crete, 68

Halbherr, Federico, 68

Hanff, Helene,
84, Charing Cross Road
, 130

Haring, Keith, 56

Hebrew script, 60

Hillary, Edmund, 255

Hiller, Stefan, 282, 284

Hisarlik, Turkey, treasure of Priam, 14

Hittite cuneiform, 114, 252

Hoenigswald, Henry, 169

Homer:

Iliad
and
Odyssey
, 4, 14, 22–23, 28–29, 254, 285

pre-Hellenic words in, 96, 248, 251

Horwitz, Sylvia L., 76

The Find of a Lifetime
, 17, 24

Hrozný, Bedřich, 92, 114, 154, 170, 195, 196, 252

Hungarian language, 235

Iklaina, Linear B script in, 271

India, curvilinear scripts of, 43

Indo-European language family, 244, 245

International Linguistics Olympiad, 98

Iron Age writing system, 233

Japanese writing, 42, 60, 73

Journal of Hellenic Studies
, 255

Jung, Carl, 208–9

Kahn, David,
The Codebreakers
, 7, 59, 72–73

Kalokairinos, Minos, 29

Kempton, Murray, 270

Kent, Roland, 153

Kephala, digging at, 29–32

Khmer alphabet, 58

Klee, Paul,
Pastorale (Rhythms)
,
55

Knossos:

archaeological digs in, 28–29, 78–80

earthquake at, 64–65

fire in, 67–68, 271, 272, 285

Greek ruling class in, 245

Minos as ruler of, 4–5, 77.
See also
Palace of Minos

and Mycenaean world, 256, 269–70

organization of tablets in, 35–36, 65

scribes' doodles, 38,
39

scribes of, 35, 38, 54, 60, 65, 67, 129, 242

tablets discovered at, 4,
6
, 33–39, 75.
See also
Evans, Arthur; Linear B

tablets exhibited, 203

tablets published, 248

tablets stored at Heraklion, 151, 162, 163

Knox-Niven, Lois Elizabeth “Betty,” 214–15

Kober, Alice, 8, 59, 72,
83
, 85–97, 102–12

achievements of, xvi–xvii, xviii–xix, 263–67

archive of papers of, xvii

birth and early years of, 90–92, 106, 115

and “button” character
, 156–58, 224

death of, 191, 199

“Evidence of Inflection in the ‘Chariot' Tablets from Knossos” (1945), 120–21, 135, 149, 279

and gender in language, 183–86,
184

grid of, 163–66,
165
, 224–25,
224
, 262, 263, 264, 267

and Guggenheim fellowship, 112, 113–14, 116, 143–45, 155, 267

health of, 186–87, 190–93, 195–96

“Inflection in Linear Class B” (1947), 134, 135–41, 159, 263

and Knossos scripts, 128, 129–33, 269

Language
article by (1950), 196–97

and Linear B decipherment, 86–88, 93–95, 102–3, 112, 118–21, 125–27, 131, 149, 227, 230, 231–32, 240, 262–67

“The Minoan Scripts: Fact and Theory” (1947), 155–56, 160, 163–67, 214

as public speaker, 85–86, 88, 103

record-keeping system of, 104–6,
105
, 107–8,
109
, 129, 259, 285

and
Scripta Minoa II
, 142, 157, 162, 172–75, 177–78, 181, 186, 187–90, 192, 195, 197–99, 233

as teacher, 91–92, 108–12, 151, 152, 267

traits of, 85–86, 87, 267

travel to Oxford, 133, 141–43, 162, 172–75, 178, 181

labyrinth, 5, 262

language:

acquisition of, 206–7

alphabets, 42–43.
See also
specific alphabets

in bilingual inscription, 47, 166, 263

bridging characters, 136, 139–41, 149, 163–66, 266

built on earlier ones, 95–96

decipherment of, 43–45, 46–53, 54

diagrammed, 44–45,
44

and gender, 183–86, 244, 264–65

grids of, 159, 163–66, 224–25,
226

and iconicity, 50–51, 53–54

inflected, 121–25, 134–35, 149, 164, 230, 264–65