
Riddle of the Labyrinth
The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code and the Uncovering of a Lost Civilisation
- 273 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Riddle of the Labyrinth
The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code and the Uncovering of a Lost Civilisation
About this book
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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Information
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- Prologue Buried Treasure
- Book One The Digger
- Book Two The Detective
- Book Three The Architect
- Appendix: The Signs of Linear B
- References
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Picture Credits
- Index