The Linear B Conversation and Controversy

Brenda Thacker
HIST 6000: Historian’s Craft
January 20, 2014
 1

In the early 20th century, the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans excavated at

Knossos, on the island of Crete. Among the artifacts found were tablets with unknown

scripts. One of those scripts would eventually be called Linear B, and scholars spent

decades trying to determine the language it represented. Finally, in the early 1950s, a

breakthrough happened thanks to an architect, Michael Ventris. He and his peers—

Alice Kober, John Chadwick, Emmett Bennett Jr.—were able to not only translate Linear

B into a language they could understand, but a language with a descendant still spoken

today: Greek. This pushed Greek writing back by centuries, even millennia. As with

many other instances of new discoveries, one would expect that scholars from a variety

of disciplines would begin developing new ideas, or perhaps using Linear B to support

old ones.

Instead, the bulk of scholarship done immediately afterward questioned

whether Ventris had gotten it right. And Ventris himself did not immediately publish

any groundbreaking theories about ancient Greece based on new information obtained

from these texts. Did the controversy surrounding the decipherment leave little room

for further speculation? Did Ventris and others even have Greek history in mind as they

worked? Today, there are many authors from many different disciplines who are using

Linear B as evidence in their work.

I seek to understand how much of the immediate response to Linear B involved

a new understanding of ancient Greece, and what that understanding was. In doing so, I

hope to demonstrate that the discourse was not only about Ventris and his methods. I
 2

also hope to answer the following questions: to what extent does criticism stifle the

process of taking new evidence and incorporating it into the existing historiography?

Does the scholar making the discovery have only the immediate goal in mind, or do they

see the bigger picture long beforehand?

Summaries of the Linear B decipherment began appearing roughly a decade

after the initial publication. One of the first to summarize the decipherment and

criticism of Linear B was Saul Levin. His The Linear B Decipherment Controversy Re-

examined was published in 1964. The goal of this book was to not further the

controversy, for according to Levin, he took “an intermediate position on the

decipherment as a whole.”1 Some of his assertions, on the other hand, would indicate

otherwise. Levin stated several issues he had with the process Ventris used to decipher

Linear B: that Ventris and Chadwick did not, in fact, approach the decipherment from a

place of pure objectivity2; and that certain grammatical rules were assumed simply

because they helped confirm the decipherment3. Only towards the end is there any

treatment of what Linear B’s decipherment might mean for our understanding of Greek

1
Levin, The Linear B Decipherment Controversy Re-examined, 5

2
Levin, The Linear B Decipherment Controversy Re-examined, 50-53

3
Levin, The Linear B Decipherment Controversy Re-examined, 230-232
 3

history, and it is couched in Levin’s own conclusion that much of Linear B is actually not

Greek (176-217)4. For Levin, the real discussion was on the discovery itself.

Not long after Levin’s book, Douglas Young published an article called “Is Linear

B Deciphered?” in Arion. After briefly pointing out Levin’s own partiality5, Young also

goes on to give a summary of the discourse surrounding Linear B, naming the big players

and their stances6. This article reads as far more impartial,l and an overview of the

discussion surrounding Linear B. It contributed to the discussion itself by providing a

thorough understanding of why Ventris’ work had been so challenged, along with

categorizing the objections7. Young does not, however, mention any discussion of

Linear B outside a philological context.

More recent works include The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: the Story of

Michael Ventris by Andrew Robinson. Published in 2002, it is a biography of Ventris

meant to show how an architect became involved in the decipherment of an ancient

and unknown script. It includes a discussion of the controversy, but its most vital

4
Levin, The Linear B Decipherment Controversy Re-examined, 176-217.

5
Douglas Young, “Is Linear B Deciphered?” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the
Classics. 4 (1965); 512

6
Young, “Is Linear B Deciphered?” 512-515.

7
Young, “Is Linear B Deciphered?” 514
 4

contribution is a clear and organized account of the decipherment. In 2010, Richard E.

McDorman digitally published a pair of essays, one of which was titled, “On the

Decipherment of Linear B.” From the beginning, McDorman acknowledges the impact

that Linear B has had. Like Robinson, McDorman provides a timeline of the work of

Ventris and others. He does not, however, mention that any scholars doubted the

translation. Even more recently, Margalit Fox wrote The Riddle of the Labyrinth. It was

published in 2013 and is another recounting of the decipherment process.

When trying to find examples of scholarship that demonstrate the importance

of Linear B, it is important to remember that historians of ancient Greece are not going

to be the only ones interested. Our understanding of Linear B has led to it being used as

evidence of theories about general Mediterranean culture. In 1972, Jan G. P. Best

published a very short work called Some Preliminary Remarks on the Decipherment of

Linear A. In it, Best suggests some possible language origins of Linear A, using the

consensus on Linear B as background. Similarly, Cyrus H. Gordon’s The Common

Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations uses Linear B to promote his theory that

ancient Greece and the Israelite kingdoms had the same origins. Referencing

Documents in Mycenaean by Ventris and Chadwick, Gordon writes:

That book draws heavily on cuneiform and Egyptian evidence, for the

administrative and economic system of the Minoan/Mycenaean sphere

 5

has affinities with other East Mediterranean lands, in which the most

important single cultural component was Mesopotamian.8

Joseph Naveh makes a similar argument in Early history of the alphabet. For

many scholars, Linear B’s decipherment provided evidence for other historical

theories. That in itself speaks to the impact the decipherment has had on

scholarship.

Another area of scholarship that has quickly taken up Linear B is research into

the history and function of writing. In 2001, Steven Roger Fischer published A History of

Writing. Fischer theorized that syllabic scripts—the category in which Linear B falls—

were “defective”9, and insufficient to fully express a vocabulary. He also theorizes,

based on the decipherment of Linear B, that its writers were Danaans who adapted

Linear A for their own uses. This tells us that the differences in language were great

enough that it was necessary to take an already existing script and change it to fit10. And

perhaps because of this difficulty with the script, Fischer is quick to conclude that

Greece’s inhabitants lost all literacy around 1100 BCE11. Barry B. Powell, also looking at

8
Cyrus H. Gordon, The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (New
York: Norton & Company, 1965), 209

9
Steven Roger Fischer, A History of Writing (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2001), 70.
10
Fischer, A History of Writing, 75-79

11
Fischer, A History of Writing, 81
 6

Linear B in the context of writing, stated in his book Writing that “Linear B did what it

was called to do, to keep economic accounts in a palace-centered redistributive

economy, and no one required more”12. Like Fischer, Powell concludes that Linear A

and Linear B represent two different languages; he also points out that the

decipherment of Linear B was momentous because it became the oldest example of a

language still being spoken in the present13. For all of these works, the emphasis is on

philology; as a result, little is said about what Linear B means for Greek history.

The historiography of Linear B and its decipherment is at once diverse and

narrow. More recent work seems to embrace the idea that Linear B, in some ways,

changed our understanding of history. In contrast, the contemporaries of Ventris

appear disinterested. I hope to fill that gap with my own research, by demonstrating

that Ventris and his colleagues were, in fact, aware of the importance of the script; and

then, hopefully, examining why those ideas never came to the forefront.

The primary sources on the decipherment of Linear B can be divided up into

three groups. The first group, and perhaps the most important to my proposed

research, contains the various archives and collections of the scholars who were at the

heart of Linear B. Various collections exist for Michael Ventris, at the University of

Texas-Austin and the University of London. His famous Work Notes were also published

12
Barry B. Powell, Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization
(Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2009) 14.
13
Powell, Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization, 135-137.
 7

and are available in a single volume through the Mobius university library system.

Ventris’ colleague, John Chadwick, is honored with a collection in the Mycenaean

Epigraphy Room at the University of Cambridge; also there is a collection of

correspondence between Chadwick and Ventris. Alice Kober’s papers are also available

at the University of Texas-Austin, as are the papers of Emmett Bennett, Jr. The

Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, has a collection for Sir Arthur Evans. At the

Bodleian Library, also at Oxford, there is a collection for Sir John Linton Myers. All of

these collections are useful for answering the question of whether the decipherers of

Linear B spent much time pondering what such a script’s unlocking would mean for

Greek history. Much of the material are unpublished writings and private letters. It is

likely that if these scholars were thinking about Greek history as they worked, they

would have discussed it with each other. Additionally, reading their personal

correspondence and research allows me to better describe who they were as

individuals, and how well—or not—they worked together. It is essential to understand

the background of these scholars.

Coming in second are the published materials by these same scholars. While

much of it may be included in the collections and archives (including some original

copies), it is nonetheless prudent to outline major works here. John Chadwick’s The

Decipherment of Linear B covers the process he and Ventris went through to confirm the

text as Greek. Together, Chadwick and Ventris also published an article titled, “Evidence

for Greek dialect in the Mycenaean archives.” This was printed in The Journal of
 8

Hellenic Studies in 1953. They also wrote Documents in Mycenaean Greek, which was

published in 1956. Alice Kober wrote various articles that were printed in the American

Journal of Archaeology, such as “The Minoan Scripts: Fact and Theory.” By comparing

these sources with the material not meant for public viewing, one can judge whether

any theories behind Linear B’s role in Greek history were left out.

Finally, the third group consists of articles and books published by scholars not

directly involved with the decipherment of Linear B. There are countless sources in this

category, all of which are routinely available through the Mobius university library

system. Some sources, such as A. J. Beattie’s A Plain Guide to the Ventris Decipherment,

regarded Ventris’ methods and whether the evidence truly supported his conclusion

that Linear B represented a Greek script. Other scholars, such as Thalia Phillies Howe

and W. C. Brice, incorporated the decipherment of Linear B into their own theories

about Greek language and history. A strong example of this is Leonard Robert Palmer’s

Mycenaeans and Minoans: Aegean Prehistory in the light of the Linear B Tablets,

published in 1962. This material gives us the opportunity to see what scholars did with

the Linear B decipherment in terms of existing theories and ideas about Greek history,

and to see how the surrounding controversy over Ventris’ reading of Linear B as Greek

may have pushed other talking points out of the discussion.

The decipherment of Linear B was a genuine turning point for many disciplines:

language, epigraphy, history, and archaeology just to name a few. However, the initial

conversation seems to have been dominated by the discovery itself, and not what that
 9

discovery meant. To my knowledge, no one has looked at the cause of that focus, or

how the criticism of the decipherment affected later efforts to incorporate Linear B into

the historiography of Greek history. As detractors of Ventris slowly quieted, scholars

came to embrace the conclusion that Linear B was, in fact, Greek; and they allowed it to

influence their own research. Extraordinary claims should always be met with

skepticism; but at what point does the skepticism cease to be healthy debate? When a

discovery is heavily criticized, does it make scholars reluctant to include it in their own

research? Ventris’ peers may have longed to see Linear B become as innovative as the

translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs or Mesopotamian cuneiform. Instead, the

conversation stalled. By understanding why, we can better understand why discoveries

of all sorts are sometimes not the groundbreaking find that everyone anticipated. And,

perhaps, it is an integral part to the process.

 10

Primary Sources

Papers and Collections

Many of the scholars who worked on the decipherment of Linear B have left for us their

notes and correspondence, along with other potentially useful sources for examining

whether they thought much about Linear B’s place in Greek history. I hope to be able to

access the following collections and archives for the purpose of better understanding

what theories they entertained while working on Linear B, prior to publication.

Ventris, Michael. Work Notes on Minoan Language and Other Unedited Papers. Edited
by Anna Sacconi. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1988. Mobius university library
system.
Michael Ventris papers. Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory (PASP). Classics
Department. University of Texas at Austin.
The Ventris Papers. Institute of Classical Studies. School of Advanced Studies.
University of London.
Alice E. Kober Papers. Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory (PASP). Classics
Department. University of Texas at Austin.
Emmett Bennett Jr. Papers. Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory (PASP). Classics
Department. University of Texas at Austin.
Ventris-Chadwick Archives and the Chadwick Collection. Mycenaean Epigraphy Room.
Faculty of Classics. University of Cambridge.
The Sir Arthur Evans Archive. Ashmolean Museum. University of Oxford.
Papers of Sir John Linton Myers. Bodleian Library. University of Oxford.
Published Material by the Decipherers
 11

I want to contrast the private notes and correspondence of the aforementioned scholars

with their published material. This is necessary to demonstrate whether their thoughts

on Linear B’s importance to Greek history, for whatever reason, never made it into the

final drafts. Unless noted, these books and journal articles are readily available through

the Mobius university library system, or are available online.

Chadwick, John. The Decipherment of Linear B. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1958.
Kober, Alice E. “Inflection in Linear Class B: 1- Declension.” American Journal of
Archaeology. Vol. 50 No. 2 (1946) 268-276.
Kober, Alice E. “The Minoan Scripts: Fact and Theory.” American Journal of
Archaeology. Vol. 52 No. 1 (1948) 82-103.
Ventris, Michael, and John Chadwick. Documents in Mycenaean Greek. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1956.
Ventris, Michael, and John Chadwick. “Evidence for Greek dialect in the Mycenaean
archives.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies. Vol. 73 (1953) 84-103.

Published Material by other Scholars

The other body of work comes from scholars who, while not a direct part of the

decipherment of Linear B, wrote on the results soon after they were made public. By

reading this material, I hope to understand how different disciplines—philology, history,

linguistics, and others—either accepted Ventris’ work on Linear B into their own

theories, or rejected the translation. Unless otherwise noted, these books are readily

available through the Mobius university library system, or are available online.
 12

Anderson, W. French. “Arithmetical Procedure in Minoan Linear A and in Minoan-Greek

Linear B.” American Journal of Archaeology. Vol. 62 No. 3 (1958) 363-368.
Beattie, A. J. A Plain Guide to the Ventris Decipherment of the Mycenaean Linear B
Script. Berlin: 1958.
Beattie, A. J. “Mr. Ventris’ Decipherment of the Minoan Linear B Script.” The Society for
the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. Vol. 76 (1956) 1-17.
Brice, W. C. “The Decipherment of the Minoan Linear Script B and the Problem of the
Linear Script A.” Man. Vol. 57 (1957) 182-183.
Davis, S. “Some Ideograms in Linear A and Linear B.” Classical Philology. Vol. 55 No. 2
(1960) 114-115.
Gelb, Ignace J. A Study of Writing: The Foundations of Grammatology. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1952.
Howe, Thalia Phillies. “Linear B and Hesiod’s Breadwinners.” Transactions and
Proceedings of the American Philological Association. Vol. 89 (1958) 44-65.
Palmer, Leonard Robert. Mycenaeans and Minoans: Aegean Prehistory in the light of
the Linear B Tablets. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1962.
 13

Secondary Sources

Best, Jan G. P. Some Preliminary Remarks on the Decipherment of Linear A. Amsterdam:

Adolf M. Hakkert, 1972.

Beye, Charles Rowan. Ancient Greek Literature and Society. New York: Cornell
University Press, 1987.

Chadwick, John. The Mycenaean World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Dickinson, Oliver. The Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994.

Fischer, Steven Roger. A History of Writing. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2001.

Fitton, J. Lesley. The Discovery of the Greek Bronze Age. Harvard: Harvard University
Press, 1998.

Fox, Margalit. The Riddle of the Labyrinth: the Quest to Crack an Ancient Code.
HarperCollins: New York, 2013.

Gordon, Cyrus H. The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations. New
York: Norton & Company, 1965.

Levin, Saul. The Linear B Decipherment Controversy Re-examined. New York: State
University of New York, 1964.

McDorman, Richard. “On the Decipherment of Linear B.” A Pair of Essays by Richard E.
McDorman. Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

Naveh, Joseph. Early history of the alphabet: an introduction to West Semitic epigraphy
and palaeography. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1982.

Olivier, J. P. “Cretan Writing in the Second Millennium BC.” World Archaeology. Vol. 17
No. 3 (1986) 377-389.
 14

Powell, Barry B. Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization.

Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2009.

Robinson, Andrew. The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris.
Thames and Hudson: London, 2002.

Robinson, Andrew. The Story of Writing. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2007.

Saggs, H. W. F. Civilization before Greece and Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989.

Sampson, Geoffrey. Writing Systems: A Linguistic Introduction. Stanford, CA: Stanford

University Press, 1985.

Singh, Simon. The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum
Cryptography. New York: First Anchor Books, 2000.

Woodard, Roger D. Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer: A Linguistic Interpretation of

the Origin of the Greek Alphabet and the Continuity of Ancient Greek Literacy.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Young, Douglas. “Is Linear B Deciphered?” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the
Classics. Vol. 4 No. 3 (1965) 512-542.