21/10/2020

In Folha, the deciphering of the writings from the Palace of Minos.

Pedra com escritos em Linear B. Foto: Wikimedia Commons

Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S.Paulo.

In 1900, British archaeologist Arthur Evans (1851–1941) discovered on the island of Crete the ruins of the "palace of King Minos," with the labyrinth where the monarch hid the Minotaur, the monstrous offspring of his wife Pasiphae and a divine bull.

Historically, more than a royal residence, the palace was a large warehouse and trading post. Records of inventory, buying, and selling operations are an important part of the archaeological findings.

Evans found that these records used three types of writing , which he called hieroglyphic, Linear A, and Linear B.

He discovered that "linear" writing systems, although they share symbols, are very different.

For example, Linear A has symbols to represent fractions, such as 1/2 or 2/3, while Linear B describes fractional parts using smaller units (as we do, for example, in 1h20m). This suggested that the two scripts corresponded to different languages , and thus the idea that Linear B could be ancient Greek gained traction.

Following Evans' death in 1941, years of intense efforts ensued to decipher Linear B script, primarily by Emmett Bennett (1918–2011) and Alice Kober (1906–1950).

The premature death of Kober, one of the few women in this field, contributed to her work not being valued as it deserves. It is impossible not to recall the case of Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958), co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule, also a premature victim of cancer.

In the end, it was the young architect and amateur linguist Michael Ventris (1922–1956) who deservedly received most of the credit. But, in his case, his disappearance only served to enhance his legend as a genius.

Ventris published his first work on Linear B writing at the age of 18 and was obsessed with the subject until his death.

After insisting for years that the language was Etruscan, in June 1952 he became convinced that it was Greek.

The success, also based on the work of his predecessors, was spectacular: the first translation by Linear B, which he published in May 1953, revealed a passage from Homer's Iliad: “a magnificent cup adorned with golden studs… had four handles. Anyone else would have difficulty removing the cup from the table when full, but Nestor, however old he was, could lift it without problems.”

Since then, the Linear B texts discovered in Crete and Greece have been systematically deciphered.

The fact that most of the texts deal solely with commercial transactions and have no literary merit does not diminish the magnitude of the achievement in any way.

Linear A writing remains misunderstood, like other ancient languages.

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