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
Dear Bennett, 47 ~hfo~ I'm sorry to inflict another letter Nor{i; HiU on you so soon after m y last one, Le111aim N6 . but I have, I think, great news fo r 18 J.u+..e 52 you. You must ;udge for yourself, ~ Be+i11&°, but I think. I've deciphered Linear 1 l'i.t,, ~ to i4-iflick =t;.er Lt11i,,- °"' YrnA .so .fOtM, otf/Lr l'l'l'lf last B, ev that Knossos and Pylos are ~ , .,,_.f; I ho.w , I fW .,)l, ~t l'ltWS f,1' Y01A . '101A ~ Ji,,'4,t, fi:,-f' yr:nMSel,f , both in Greek. Rather than go I,,..~ I lhtvik I've deciph~ Li:.iu,,r 13 , k. btiei/; /'wio~s &- Pylos C1M i,oa; IA'! GruJ,. . Jli.a!.i,e,t- ~W ~ W\0 g=t a*'i,I. j.Ait HoW, f'tt, ~ J< ~ yo-\,f "I ~e,,laeiV(I into great detail ;ust now, I'll try n?:1>1s-l.ile-reltiOV1 of !i;e, IMO.st i,.,~h~ t,,l:,{ef5 . I l\'tl>1t l,.o,l;J;e,r ~ wi,;lt, tr, e, M,j~ ev gi ve y ou a representati ve & !tie. ~GU, pi,,<>~ v-al,..eY6'Ta 1 ( .fo lies in the fa ct that L ev R have no Xo1pofopyo1 t i separate spelling, ev that -L, -N, -R, Kvwo-cr101. -S ev Diphthongal -I are not writ Opening of the letter fro m the British architect Michael Ventris to the American Classicist t en when they close a syllable. Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. , announcing the decipherment of Linear B as Greek. Ventris expl ains that, as is typi cal for open-syllabic scripts, certain related sounds arc represented by the same This is one stage worse than the sign. For example, in Linear B one sign stands for ra and la, another fo r re and le, and so on. Also some sounds are not represented when they close a syllable. Ventris then presents a Cypriot syllabary, ev p erhaps series of texts interpreted in Greek according to his deciphered values, beginning with tabl et comes from the nature of the Lin Ce 59 from the major Cretan palati al site of Kn ossos. ear A language.
e original of this transatlantic announcement. The manuscript is scholars shared Ventris's passionate London-to-New Haven) letter, stored in the archives of the Program interest in the inscriptions, mainly Tidated 18 June 1952, is treated in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory clay tablets, belonging to the three as a sacred artifact, and looked upon (PASPJ at The University of Texas at then undeciphered systems of writing with commensurate awe, by those Austin among selected letters of (Minoan pictographic, Linear A and who understand the meaning of its Michael Ventris to two Americans, Linear BJ used on the island of Crete technical discussion and the signifi Alice E. Kober and Emmett L. Ben and the Greek mainland during the cance of its stunningly understated nett, Jr. Forty years ago these two second millennium B.C.
20 In the remaining pages of this send in the second letter a list enti letter and in the next of June 26, tled II Nam es of professions at 1952, Ventris explained to Bennett Knossos and Pylos With tentative some of the key details and dramat Greek readings." It contained sixty ic results of his decipherment of entries divided by Gree k noun Linear B. He did not have to classes. These were drawn primari describe to Bennett the general sig ly from tablets which contained nificance of this breakthrough. lists in which the Linear B They both well understood. Greek ideogram or object-sign for "MAN" of the Homeric Age ( 1400-1200 followed each phonetically written B.C.) could now be read for the first entry. This provided a fairly secure time. The features of Bronze Age context for Ventris's preliminary society, as it then was known to conjectures and made him feel that exist through archaeological inves "the whole thing isn't a hallucina tigation, beginning in the late tion." Despite any doubts Ventris 1860s, at palatial centers like had about the validity of his deci Mycenae, Tiryns, and Pylos in the pherment-he confesses in his sec southern Balkan peninsula and ond letter to II a rather painful reac Knossos in north central Crete, tion from [his initial] optimism"- Michael Ve ntris (1 922- 1956). could now be reconstructed from 80 percent to 90 percent of his contemporary records. Ventris did interpretations of the items in this list are still generally accepted today. "Priest, fuller, potter, smith, granary workers, cooks, bakers, I a +. bow-makers, goldsmiths, armour et<, le A ' ~I er? , commander, goatherd, priest r I A I te ti ess, shepherd, carpenter, heralds, z' T fl e ~ r- r C king, messenger." The very names ...L - *; ka of prehistoric slaves, skilled work ,~ r X EB ers and craftsmen, religious and pa political officials, and even of n B
":>tu use throughout the second millennium "" ~j ffe,-e,,-,I; WJTdf it e-,,,b i"'{JS . and that mainland Mycenaean soci -A -p -0- - V - L 11ot w,,i Me.. wt-,..., ltie..t tl.ose. Cl ~~~ ; <'l 21 had never entertained written, i. e., pre-com the notion that Linear B pu terized, indices of Lin - could be Greek, and he ear A, Linear B, Lycian, long thought that Linear and other miscellaneous A and Linear B would inscriptions. These are turn out to represent the composed in fountain same language. A single I'. pen on minute slips of fine stroke of his pen is l brittle pink and brown his simple way of reveal ish paper stored in car- ing his shock upon dis 0 tons of the Lucky Strike covering a fact that .... and Fleetwood cigarettes would call for a radical which brought on h er early death. n ew vision of Aegean 0 prehistory. Homerists, Kober had become archaeologists, and his interested in the Minoan 7 torians alike would soon scripts as an undergradu- be grappling with the ate Latin major with a notion of a late Greek Greek minor, but for her Ph.D. degree at Bronze Age. 7 On the fortieth anniver Columbia (1932) she sary of this trem endous wrote a conventional intellectual feat, which 0 dissertation on Color literally created the field Terms in the Creel, in which I work, I want Poets. In 1935 Sir ed to understand better Arthur Evans finall y how and why it was % published a sizable selec accomplished and what • Mycenaean Cen tres tion of the Linear B its legacy has been. I • Mycenaean Senlements tablets from Knossos 1 Gia turned again to the let 0 110 100 1110 200 that he had discovered mc::Jlll!C:Jei::= ==-""""'-====' km. 2 Haliartos ters and to the historical 3 Eu tresis at the turn of the centu 4 Zygou ries ry. In the same year, collection of offprints of 5 Be rbati articles in PASP, the 6 Prosymna Kober was appointed an core of which was donat 7 Ka kovatos assistant professor at 8 Peristeria ed by Bennett himself 9 Mou ri atada newly founded Brooklyn from what he called his 10 Amni sos College. She thus had AR THROTHEKE- and 11 Vathypetro motive and opportunity by Frank Stubbings of to make a proper assault Cambridge University, Map of the principal sites of Minoan (Cretan) and Mycenaean (G reek) civi on Linear A and B. She an expert in the connec lizations. began by retooling her- tions of the Mycenaean self in statistics, in the world with contemporary Cyprus work together continued until Ven principles of the hard sciences of and the Levant and with the later tris's untimely death in a car crash physics and chemistry, and in a Homeric epics. Almost everything on September 6, 1956. wide range of ancient scripts and ever written, and even informally At the outset (1948-49) of the languages. By so doing, she was able circulated, about Minoan, Myce preserved correspondence, Bennett, to devise and employ scrupulously naean, or Cypriote inscriptions can Kober, and Ventris were all young sound methods for analyzing the be found in our file drawers, often and exceptionally gifted, with tal Minoan texts. She thereby identi with personal annotations by the ents that complemented one anoth fied, in an article published in authors or recipients. I also turned er's. Kober had just turned forty American fournal of Archaeology or once more to an account of Ventris's two, when Ventris wrote to her on ATA in 1948, patterns of variation at work, The Decipherment of Linear 22 February 1949-enclosing a copy the ends of sign-groups in the B B, written by John Chadwick. In to be forwarded to Bennett- about script ("Kober's triplets") which 1952 Chadwick had just been problems in compiling standard eventually suggested to Ventris pos appointed to a lectureship in philol indices, based on frequency of sible test values for signs in the ogy at Cambridge. He immediately occurrence, of the 90-100 phonetic course of his decipherment. In turn, grasped the correctness of Ventris's signs in the closely related scripts A his decipherment of Linear B proved decipherment and volunteered his and B. He was then concentrating that "Kober's triplets" were inflect h elp in a letter of July 13, 1952: on the earlier Linear A and kidding- ed endings of words written in an " Anyway, if there is anything a 1y urged her in a postscript to open-syllabic version of early Greek. mere philologist can do, please let " hurry up & decipher the thing As we have seen, this confirmation me know." Chadwick collaborated [Linear B] for us." In retrospect, of the soundness of her scholarship with Ventris on writing the first these words take on a fatally ironic came just over two years too late for scholarly and technical explanation tone. Alice Kober died of cancer on her own appreciation. of the decipherment in the f ournal May 16, 1950. The University of Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. was thirty of Hellenic Studies for 1953. Their Texas has her meticulously hand- and an instructor in the D epart- 22 ment of Classics at Yale to Bennett deal specifi University when he cally with the charac received the first (April ters of the scripts, how 20, 1949) of his pre they are formed, how served letters from Ven their shapes might sug tris. In this letter Ven gest relationships in tris expresses his "great phonetic values, how confidence in your [i .e., their frequ encies can Bennett's] and Dr [sic] best be determined and Kober's handling of the analyzed (by sheer num Pylos and Knossos 'B' bers of occurrences or material" and again by the numbers of sign declares his intention to groups in which they concentrate on the earli are used), and even the er Linear A texts: "I significance of their thought it would not resemblance to the char queer your [Bennett's] acters of a distantly pitch too much to con related syllabary used fine myself to a study of on the island of Cyprus the 'A' material." H e during the first millen Original photograph lea. 1904 by the photographer for Sir Arthur Evans) and also speaks of himself current drawing of tablet Ce 59 from Knossos, illustrating the difficulty of nium B.C. to write modestly, and redun establishing correct texts upon which to base a decipherment. The photo Greek and a still dantly, as being "only a graph comes from the study collection of Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. , who inher unknown, indigenous 'spare time scholar'." I ited it from Alice E. Kober and donated it to the PASP archives. The writing language. It is no easy surface of the tablet is damaged and broken at its left edge, and the extant have now read an assort line .3 is over an era sure. In his transcription of 18 June 1952, Ventris did not task to establish the ment of letters from and notice, because of the direction of light in the photograph, that the first repertory of signs in a to all the principal numerical entry in line .2 had been era sed and the number "6" replaced by script which contains researchers in Aegean " 10." He also did not transcribe or interpret the sign groups written above about 100 characters of scripts in the late 1940s the descriptive term we-ka-ta " workers" that precedes and describes the unknown values. We ideogram for bovid in each line. We should al so note that Ventris transcribed and 1950s. American, the male version of the sign for bovid in all six entries. In fact, the second now know that about Austrian, British, Bul entry in line .2 lacks the two horizontal cross-strokes that distinguish male 70-100 scribes wrote the garian, Czech, French, animals from generic animals. Fortunately, none of these particularities was tablets from Knossos German, Greek, Italian, important for Ventris's purposes. and about 25-35 scribes Spanish, and Swedish all worked on the tablets complain about their lack of time to remarked in a letter to the great from Pylos. Each scribe has pecu work on their main scholarly pas Swedish prehistorian Arne Furu liarities. Each can write his signs sion, and all assume that their plight mark, which I was permitted to simply or elaborately, with casual is peculiar to themselves. read in 1992 while lecturing at the haste or special care. When the Bennett perhaps came closest to University of Uppsala, that Ben phonetic values of the individual being the one "specialist" in this nett's model study of the Minoan signs were not yet known, one international group. For his disser fractions had encouraged him to could not be sure whether an alter tation, completed in 1947 at the continue working on Minoan ation of shape was meaningful or University of Cincinnati, he had scripts, since it demonstrated an accidental. Does that vertical studied the palaeographical features approach by which hard facts about stroke in that letter you wrote rep of the Linear B tablets that had the scripts could be established resent "l" or an uncrossed "t"? Are been discovered in 1939 on the beyond all doubt. you giving someone a "tip" or Greek mainland at Pylos. During Many of the letters from Ventris some "lip"? One could also not be World War II, he had worked at breaking Japanese codes. He thus had a firsthand familiarity with the tablets and the nature of writing Dr. Thomas G. Palaima is the Dickson Centeruual Profes upon them. He also had an uncom sor of Classics and Director of the Program in Aegean promising appreciation of those Scripts and Prehistory at The University of Texas at methods of cryptanalysis that could Austin. He is an expert in the earliest fom1 of Greek writ be applied to the problems posed by ing, Linear B. The recipient of a MacArtlmr fellowship, Dr. Pala.ima is particularly interested in the development the brief, almost shorthand Linear of writing and administrative systems in the eastern A and Linear B inscriptions. These Mediterranean in the second milleruuum B.C. He is the specialist virtues produced a bril author or editor of five books and two dozen articles and liant article, still unsuperseded, on has received Fulbright research awards to Greece and Austria. In 1986 he founded a research center at UT the Minoan Linear A fractional sys Austin for the study of Bronze Age inscriptions and ci vi tem in the 1950 A/A, followed by lizations, the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory, careful signaries and textual tran which has become the best place in the world to study scriptions, the absence of which this material. Dr. Pala.ima received his B.A. from Boston had long limited the chances of a College and hi s Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. valid decipherment. Ventris 23 sure that an added and toward Linear B, embellishment did not which was becoming impart a different more promising. value to a sign, for Kober, in cooperation example, as in German with Sir John Myres, " ii" versus "u" or had begun to classify, French II e" versus II e". catalogue, and index All of this had to be the approximately figured out in linguis 1,400 unpublished Lin tic darkness by paying ear B tablets from careful attention to Knossos and their con individual and com tents, tracing meticu mon features of writ lously in her own hand ing and to the patterns the original drawings of sign occurrence of Sir Arthur Evans. within words. Bennett Bennett was editing and Kober paid atten the 600 or so tablets tion to these. Ventris from Pylos and, as we paid attention to these have seen, establishing and to them. In the a clear signary or stan month of his decipher dard list of Linear B ment, on June 5, 1952, signs. Ventris officially adopt The questionnaire ed for his sign-group moves from general index the signary order questions about the for the Linear B script likely linguistic and DESIGNED BY DR. cultural picture of the BENNETT FOR 'THE Aegean area during the PYLOS TABLETS'." second millennium Ventris himself was Two of Alice Kober's cigarette-carton files. The carton of Lu cky Strikes con B.C. to specific ques tains, according to Kober's label, M ycenaean words in "alphabetical" order, tions about the struc the most precocious of specifically sign-groups beginning with the Lin ea r B sign now known to repre the trio. He would only sent e through those beginning with a. Kober was following the numerical ture and opera ting turn thirty a month order of the signs established by Sir Arthur Evans. The Fleetwood carton con principles of the Linear after he proposed his tains hand-drawn texts of the Pylos tablets filed according to the series classifi A and B writing sys decipherment: specifi cation scheme proposed by Bennett. Individual sign groups are circled in red. tems. Among other cally on July 12, a birth- things, Ventris was day he shared, by remarkable coinci Ventris brought together the dozen worried about the probability that dence, with Emmett Bennett. An or so scholars who were seriously the inhabitants of the Mycenaean architect by rich natural talent, per working worldwide on the scripts. mainland and Minoan Crete had sonal choice, and training-he He did this in the critical period used different languages and how received the first Architects' fournal from 1948 until June 1952, through that would affect the relationship of Research Fellowship in 1956- Ven his letters to them and through a the two scripts to each other. He tris had become fascinated with the series of his own mimeographed was also interested in the degree to Aegean scripts while still a school work notes which he circulated which the language or languages boy doing "a bit of Greek." In 1936 openly. Best known is his Mid represented by Linear A and B at the age of fourteen he had attend Century Report on the languages of would have been 'contaminated' by ed an exhibition in London at which the Minoan and Mycenaean civi loan words from contemporary or Sir Arthur Evans was speaking about lizations, distributed on March 7, pre-existing cultures. These could the palatial civilization of Minoan 1950. This contained responses by throw off researchers who made Crete. Evans was also the first seri eleven scholars- his own being the lucky guesses about the meanings of ous student and classifier of Aegean last and fullest-to twenty-one certain textually controlled sign writing and devoted a good portion questions which he had formulated groups on the basis of preconceived of his lecture to the three systems of about the scripts. Most of the ques theories about the underlying lan writing that had been used at various tions have multiple parts or suggest guages. Such problems plague the stages of cultural development on a number of possible options. Their undeciphered Minoan Linear A the island. Ventris was fascinated. range of subjects and clarity of script even today. Unlike Bennett From then on, h e dedicated his expression indicate how deeply and and perhaps unlike Kober, Ventris 'spare- time' self to deciphering these broadly-Appendix 5 of Ventris's himself still believed that Linear A scripts. His first article on the sub reply contained a "short" bibliogra and Linear B were forms of the same ject, "Introducing the Minoan Lan phy of 100 books and articles per language; and he persisted in think guage," was published in A f A in taining to "Aegean linguistics" -he ing, as he had in his 1940 AfA arti 1940. He concealed from the editors was then thinking about the prob cle, that this language would prove the irrelevant information that he lem of decipherment. They also to be some non-Indo-European was just eighteen years old. reveal a change in his focus during 'Aegean' dialect related to the lan - It is no exaggeration to say that the year 1949, away from Linear A guage found in inscriptions of the 24 Etruscans in northern Italy and per birthplace of democracy and of Ventris concludes: "Both points of haps also on the island of Lemnos in Western modes of thought and view involve too rigid an identifica the northeast Aegean. However, he artistic expression? These are seri tion of culture, race and language, shared Bennett's and Kober's abso ous accusations, especially in a and the truth probably lies some lute conviction that the script and period when our ethnically and where between the two." Rather it its texts had to be analyzed thor racially diverse society seem s to be is a conclusion based on a careful oughly in abstract, as clements of a coming apart and when universities consideration of all factors and data code and encoded messages, before and colleges are debating how to connected with this particular one could apply values to the signs make courses of study more multi scholarly problem. and begin to interpret the texts. It cultural and interdisciplinary. If John Chadwick uses the follow was this conviction that made it such charges do not stick to the ing words and phrases in describing possible for Ventris both to conclude subdiscipline of Aegean studies, it Michael Ventris: "a man whom and to accept that the language of is because of the forthright honesty nothing but superlatives fitted "; the Linear B texts was Greek, with which Ventris proposed to " modesty "; "he advanced his despite his long-standing personal eradicate such tendencies at the claims with suitable caution and belief in the likelihood of an "Etr outset. He included them among hesitancy"; "simple and unassum uscan solution." I know from long those casual assumptions that were ing, always ready to listen, to help, personal acquaintance and suspect " further confusing our vague to understand ." These are the from scholarly familiarity that Ben knowledge"; and h e knew that no qualities of personality that nett and Kober shared with Ventris such assumptions could be tolerat enabled Ventris to draw together these fundamental characteristics of ed if real progress was to be made gradually and almost unintention the true scholar: love of truth and a toward learning the language or ally a small group of scholars who detached and unembarrassed appre languages represented by Minoan were then, in a dozen different ciation that one's own opinions can and Mycenaean writing. countries and quite unknowingly, at any moment be proved false-or His clearest criticism is to be taking part in the creation of a new true. Ventris's questionnaire can found in his own reply to the first field of study. Of his intellectual and should still be used by would-be question of the mid-century ques qualities, Chadwick remarks: decipherers as a model of the kinds tionnaire concerning the position [W]e can point to his capacity of honest questions they should ask of the language of the Linear B for infinite pains, his powers of about the historical context, inter texts: concentration, his m eticulous nal structure, and working princi Our researches have been prej accuracy, his beautiful draughts ples of an undeciphered script. udiced by conscious or uncon manship .... He had a keen appre Besides creating an informal scious acceptance of the official ciation of the realities of a situa international community of schol Nazi doctrine, according to tion; the Mycenaeans were to ars of Aegean scripts, Ventris's role which all admirable civiliza him no vague abstractions, but was critical in shaping the direc tions are due to Nordic blood living people whose thoughts he tion of their work and, I think, (or at least to the speakers of could penetrate. He himself laid even more importantly in setting a I/ E [i.e., Inda-European] lan stress on the visual approach to universal tone or spirit. In the last guages), and which incidentally the problem; he made himself five years, the discipline of Classics saw in the Etruscans an earlier so familiar with the visual and particularly those Classicists prototype of all those non aspect of the texts that large sec who are interested in the formative Aryan vices of luxury, obsceni tions were imprinted on his stages of Greek culture, i.e., prehis ty, cruelty, necromancy and mind simply as visual patterns, torians, have been criticized, most usury for which the Jews were long before the decipherm ent openly by Martin Bernal in two vol later to be scapegoats. gave them meaning. umes entitled Black Athena, for However, Ventris also had a lesson If we take a look at the pages of being elitist, culturally imperialis for extremists of the "if not A, then Ventris's letters, we can see all of tic, anti-Semitic, or 'Aryanist' in Z" type, currently represented by these qualities represented, graphi interpreting Greek history and pre Bernal and his followers: cally and visually, in the precision history. Thus Mycenologists like The diametrically opposite and detail of his hand, the clear myself no longer can claim a kind view, crudely stated, ascribes simplicity of his style, the honest of professional immunity from con the early cultures of the descriptions and illustrations of the temporary political or social issues Aegean and of the western current state of his thinking. How by virtue of abstruse specialization, Mediterranean to the peculiar ever, to my mind, one thing in as did Inda-European linguists in genius of the Mediterranean these letters best typifies Michael Stalinist Russia. Have we witting race (and to the languages Ventris. Ventris was free to decide ly or unwittingly distorted the past, native to it from N eolithic which Linear B text his American through a Hellenocentric bias that times); and dates the flowering friend and colleague Emmett Ben attributes to Greek civilization of Classical civilization from nett would ever read and under unique qualities that determined the assimilation into this local stand in Greek. Bennett had and the fundamental nature of modern population of the ponderous continues to have the reputation of Western culture? Have we ignored influx of slow-witted I/ E being highly skeptical, or as John the contribution of Semitic, Egyp speaking barbarians. Chadwick puts it, "studiously non tian, and African cultures to the It is not a convenient or "soft" committal." Most scholars in Ven society that eventually became the intellectual compromise when tris's position would aim for the 25 tour de force. I would probably that, when applied, made reason Texas to see how cattle are raised, have presented first a text that I ably good sense of two out of seven tended, used, and identified in an could interpret in all details, as a words on the tablet. But on June environment none too different demonstration of the validity of my 18, 1952 Ventris was issuing an from that of the southern Aegean. work, and then moved on to more open and genuinely polite invita The Texas hospitality I experienced problematical texts. Or I would tion that h as been repeated con mirrors Greek xenia as one of the have chosen a text that contained stantly among Mycenologists for enduring "realities of the situa impressive items of vocabulary, the next forty years: "You must tion" that the decipherer of Linear like the rather rare Mycenaean and judge for yourself." B so appreciated. Homeric word for exalted king (wa This spirit of international coop Michael Ventris in the Decem na-ka) or the chief god of the eration and honest inquiry among ber 1953 number of the journal Greeks Zeus (di-we). That is, I Mycenologists has continued dur Antiquity produced a retrospective would have followed the biblical ing the last forty years. The tablets note on his decipherment methods: practice: "Use the best wine first." are studied and used by specialists Each operation needs to be What did Ventris do? Ventris in palaeography, archival studies, planned in three phases: an offers Knossos 59 as the first fruit field archaeology, art history, exhaustive analysis of the of his labors, and then proceeds anthropology, and technical sci signs, words and contexts in all with a numerically ordered selec ences such as geomorphology, the available inscriptions, tion of tablets from Knossos and palaeobotany, and zooarchaeology. designed to extract every possi Pylos. Knossos 59 is the kind of Scholars of Egyptian, Near Eastern, ble clue as to the spelling sys text that in, of, and for itself, only a Mesopotamian, Northern Euro tem, meaning and language true Texan could love. It deals pean, and New World cultures offer structure; an experimental sub with the mundane subject of cattle insights from their own perspec stitution of phonetic values to management. In Ventris's version, tives. As a result, we now know: give possible words and inflec 70 oxen ( ')"f) are listed and briefly (1) that Knossos 59 refers to groups tions in a known or postulated identified in five groups of 6 and of oxen located in various regions language; and a decisive check, one group of 40. Applying his of central and western Crete; (2) preferably with the aid of vir newly discovered sign values, Ven that cattle and oxen were bred and gin material, to ensure that the tris could read correctly the tended in special areas within apparent results are not due to descriptive term we-ka-ta = Mycenaean palatial territories; (3) fantasy, coincidence or circular f Ep"(aTaL = wergatai = "workers" that some cattle were eventually reasoning. that described the oxen in all six sacrificed and consumed at great On the practical side, I believe he entries. Beyond this, the text most ceremonial banquets during state undoubtedly would have added: ly raised problems for Ventris and religious festivals; (4) that worker Consult and listen to other his proposed decipherment. The oxen were assigned in groups to be scholars who have a different first two entries in the first column used for hauling and pulling in slant on the problem than you are fragmentary, so Ventris could building projects, or in pairs to do. Always test your ideas and only draw the single remaining leg privileged land-holders for plowing; make it clear that you invite ible Linear B character in each line. and (5) that Cretan cattle could be and appreciate the criticisms The third entry contains the Cretan identified by their breed colors and of others. Never proceed on place name tu-ri-s o = Tylissos, bear corresponding names: Wine the basis of unproved assump which Ventris transcribes in Greek. Face, White Foot, White Mouth, tions. Investigate all possibili The second column contains one Blackie, Dapple. Because the ties. And never invest your doubtfully identified and two frag Mycenaeans, like Texas Hill Coun own ego in an idea to the mentary place names. The latter try settlers in the 1800s, were so extent that you will not be Ventris has partially misrepresent adept at making use of every avail willing to abandon it when a ed. As his grid shows, at this stage able resource, I have attended a better idea comes along. he had not figured out that Linear B seminar on traditional cattle This would complete the blueprint had separate signs for the t- and d slaughtering given by a butcher that a British architect had forty series of syllables. As evidentiary from Indiana to find out how years ago for the decipherment and proof, Knossos 59 offered one sinews, horns, and other parts of continuing study of the earliest descriptive term and one known the animal are used. And I have written records in European civi Cretan place name, i.e., a total of visited the ranch of Jacquie and lization. D six sign values (we, l 26