Customer Reviews
Concise and very well written - By: J. Reffin, 04 Apr 2008 
This slim volume elegantly & concisely describes the process by which Michael Ventris deciphered the Linear B script. The story is worth telling, not least because Ventris was an amateur scholar - working as a professional architect while pursuing this work as a hobbyin his spare time. It was written by Ventris' close collaborator, John Chadwick, shortly after the decipherment & this proximity to the events described allows Chadwick to convey to the reader some of the excitement of discovery.
The book was prepared for the general reader so does not require any great specialist knowledge. As such, it is heartily recommended to anyone with an interestin learning more about the topic. The story is made poignant by the tragic deathin a road accident of Michael Ventrisin 1956, a couple of years after the main events described. Chadwick's own sense of loss can be seen through the text.
My copy dates from 1961 so lacks the later postscript but, such was the quality of the original work by Ventris & Chadwick, the content remains relevant todayin all its essentials.
A popular account by an expert - By: Eoin McAuley, 08 Jun 2005 The decipherment of this ancient Mycenaean script from about 1400 BC was one of the great mystery stories of the 20th Century. John Chadwick is an expertin archaic Greek, who assisted Michael Ventrisin deciphering the thousands of clay tablets discoveredin the ruins of Knossos & Pylos. Ventris's demonstration that the language was an archaic form of Greek rocked the world of Ancient Greek history. In this book, Chadwick gives a popular account of the decipherment, somewhat light on the technical details of Ventris's discoveries, but with a good section on what the translated records show of Mycenaean society. The book was writtenin the 1950s but has a modern postscript which shows that most of the original findings still stand today.
