Editing Linear B (section)

=== Michael Ventris' identification as Greek ===
[[File:Linear B tablet An 35.svg|thumb|190px|Illustration of a Linear B tablet from [[Pylos]]]]
In 1935, the [[British School at Athens]] was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary with an exhibition at [[Burlington House]], London. Among the speakers was [[Arthur Evans]], then 84 years old; a teenage [[Michael Ventris]] was present in the audience.<ref>[https://sites.utexas.edu/scripts/files/2020/05/1993-TGP-MichaelVentrisBlueprint.pdf] Thomas G Palaima, "Michael Ventris's Blueprint: Letters reveal how a British architect and two American scholars worked to decipher a Bronze Age script and read the earliest writings in western civilization", Discovery: Research and Scholarship at the University of Texas at Austin, 1993</ref> In 1940, the 18-year-old Ventris had an article ''Introducing the Minoan Language'' published in the ''[[American Journal of Archaeology]]''.<ref>Robinson, (2002) pp32–3</ref><ref>Ventris, M. G. F., "Introducing the Minoan Language.", American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 494–520, 1940</ref> After wartime service as a navigator with [[RAF Bomber Command]], and a post-war year in Occupied Germany, he returned to civilian life, and completed qualification as an architect. Ventris continued with his interest in Linear B, corresponding with known scholars, who usually but not always replied.<ref>Chadwick, ''Decipherment'' 1961 Pelican edition pp. 47–9</ref>

Ventris and [[John Chadwick]], a university lecturer in Ancient Greek philology, performed the bulk of the decipherment of Linear B between 1951 and 1953. At first Ventris chose his own numbering method, but later switched to Bennett's system. His initial decipherment was achieved using Kober's classification tables, to which he applied his own theories. Some Linear B tablets had been discovered on the Greek mainland. Noticing that certain symbol combinations appeared only on the tablets found in Crete, he conjectured that these might be names of places on the island. This proved to be correct. Working with the symbols he could decipher from this, Ventris soon unlocked much text and determined that the underlying language of Linear B was in fact Greek. This contradicted general scientific views of the time, and indeed Ventris himself had previously agreed with Evans's hypothesis that Linear B was not Greek.<ref name="Pope2008" /> Ventris's first public announcement of his breakthrough came on 1 July 1952, on [[BBC Radio]], with Ventris describing the language of Linear B as "A difficult and archaic Greek, seeing that it's five hundred years older than Homer, and written in a rather abbreviated form, but Greek nevertheless."<ref>{{cite web |title=''In Search of the Trojan War'' Episode Two |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc8I2IuVxEw?t=3120 |website=YouTube |publisher=British Broadcasting Corporation |access-date=25 October 2024 |date=1985}}</ref> Ventris' discovery was of significance in demonstrating a Greek-speaking Minoan-Mycenaean culture on Crete, and thus presenting Greek in writing centuries earlier than had been previously accepted.<ref>[[Jacquetta Hawkes]] ''Dawn of the Gods'' 1972 Sphere Books pp. 49–51</ref> Chadwick, who helped Ventris develop his decipherment of the text and discover the vocabulary and grammar of Mycenaean Greek, noted:<ref>{{Cite book| publisher = Brill Archive| isbn = 978-90-04-08934-1| last1 = Best| first1 = Jan G. P.| last2 = Woudhuizen| first2 = Fred C.| title = Lost Languages from the Mediterranean| date = 1989 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=resUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA49}}</ref><blockquote>That any Linear B tablets are written in a language other than Greek still remains to be demonstrated; but that words and usages not exactly paralleled in later Greek occur is both certain and to be expected. But we must not resort to "non-Greek" whenever we come up against an insoluble problem.</blockquote>
The first edition of their book, ''Documents in Mycenaean Greek'', was published in 1956, shortly after Ventris's death in an automobile accident.<ref name="Pope2008" /> 

The Ventris decipherment did not immediately meet with universal approval,<ref>Treweek, A. P., "Chain reaction or house of cards? An examination of the validity of the Ventris decipherment", Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, no. 4, pp. 10–26, 1957</ref> and was initially viewed with some scepticism.{{Sfn|Tracy|2018|pp=1-16}} Professor [[Arthur James Beattie|A. J. Beattie]] of Edinburgh published his doubts in the later 1950s. Saul Levin of the State University of New York considered that Linear B was partly Greek but with an earlier substrate, in his 1964 book ''The Linear B controversy reexamined''.<ref>{{cite book |author=Levin, Saul |author-link= |title=The Linear B Decipherment Controversy Re-examined |publisher=[[State University of New York Press]] |year=1964 |oclc=288842}}</ref> Nevertheless, starting from the mid-50s onward the Ventris discovery came to be viewed favourably by scholars, such as professors [[Carl Blegen]] and [[Sterling Dow]], which along with Ventris' 1954 article, resulted to the discovery's wide acceptance.{{Sfn|Tracy|2018|pp=1-16}}