: See, e.g., AEK to JFD, May 4, 1942, AEK Papers, PASP; Alice E. Kober, “The ‘Adze’ Tablets from Knossos,” American Journal of Archaeology 48:1 (1944), 65, note 2.Abbreviations
ABSA |
Annual of the British School at Athens |
AE |
Sir Arthur Evans |
AEK |
Alice Elizabeth Kober |
AJE |
Arthur John Evans |
CWB |
Carl W. Blegen |
ELB |
Emmett L. Bennett Jr. |
HAM |
Henry Allen Moe |
JC |
John Chadwick |
JFD |
John Franklin Daniel |
JLM |
John Linton Myres |
JS |
Johannes Sundwall |
LV |
Lois Ventris |
MV |
Michael Ventris |
PASP |
Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory, University of Texas, Austin |
WTMF |
William T.M. Forbes |
likened to that of Rosalind Franklin: Andrew Robinson, Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World’s Undeciphered Scripts (London: Peter N. Nevraumont/BCA, 2002a), 16; Thomas G. Palaima and Susan Trombley, “Archives Revive Interest in Forgotten Life,” Austin American-Statesman, Oct. 27, 2003, A9.
sitting night after night at her dining table: Brann (2005), 4, speaks of AEK’s doing this.
“IBM machines”: AEK postcard to ELB, April 4, 1950, ELB Papers, PASP.
“I don’t like the idea of getting paid”: AEK to JFD, Feb. 18, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“In the words of Ventris”: Robinson (2002a), 91.
“a feeling for the fitness of things”: AEK to HAM, Sept. 8, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“There is no thread”: Robinson (2002a), 95.
On March 23, 1900: See, e.g., Sir Arthur Evans, The Palace of Minos: A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos, vol. 4, part 2 (London: Macmillan, 1935), 668.
thirty local workmen: Joan Evans, Time and Chance: The Story of Arthur Evans and His Forebears (London: Longmans, Green, 1943), 329. The book’s author was the younger half sister of AE. on a knoll bright with anemones and iris: AE diary entry, March 19, 1894, quoted in J. Evans (1943), 312.
his workmen’s spades turned up fragments: For accounts of the early finds at Knossos, see, e.g., J. Evans (1943), 330ff.; Horwitz (1981), 95ff.; and J. L. Myres, “The Cretan Exploration Fund: An Abstract of the Preliminary Report of the First Season’s Excavations,” Man 1 (1901), 4–7.
the historic basis of the enduring myth of the labyrinth: See, e.g., A. J. Evans, “The Prehistoric Acropolis of Knossos,” Annual of the British School at Athens (ABSA), no. 6, session 1899–1900 (London: Macmillan, [1901]), 33.
“such a find,” Evans wrote: AE letter to Sir John Evans, November 1900, quoted in J. Evans (1943), 335.
In his first season alone: J. Evans (1943), 332–33; Myres (1901), 5.
On March 30: Evans (1899–1900), 18.
On April 5: Ibid.
more than a thousand tablets: Myres, “The Cretan Exploration Fund,” 5.
a special font, in two different sizes: Evans (1899–1900), 58, note 2; Horwitz (1981), 131.
“Of all the decipherments of history”: David Kahn, The Code-breakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 917.
the most visible Bronze Age ruins there could be dated: Horwitz (1981), 63.
the distinguished archaeologist Flinders Petrie: See, e.g., Joseph Alexander MacGillivray, Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth (London: Pimlico, 2001), 78ff.
Schliemann dug fruitlessly for several years: Horwitz (1981), 61.
the authenticity of some of his finds: For a précis of the doubts cast on Schliemann’s work, see, e.g., MacGillivray (2001), 57ff.
“the later Greeks understandably concluded”: John Chadwick, The Mycenaean World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 55.
Digging down into the circle: MacGillivray (2001), 60ff.
“It seemed incredible that [such] a civilisation”: Arthur J. Evans, “Pre-Phoenician Writing in Crete, and Its Bearings on the History of the Alphabet,” Man 3 (1903), 52.
Perhaps the Mycenaeans had written on perishable materials: See, e.g., Evans (1909), 3.
hints that they had written on sturdier stuff: A list of Mycenaean objects known as of 1894 to contain writing-like symbols, including seal-stones, pottery, engraved gems, inscribed building blocks, and clay pendants, appears in Evans (1894), 346.
unearthed a clay amphora: Ibid., 273. This and the vase-handle discovery are credited to Tsountas in Evans (1903).
a stone vase whose handle was engraved: Arthur J. Evans, “Primitive Pictographs and a Prae-Phoenician Script, from Crete and the Peloponnese,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 14 (1894), 273.
the remains of a Bronze Age wall: MacGillivray (2001), 93.
In the early 1880s: Ibid., 95.
dismissed as “masons’ marks”: Evans (1894), 281.
had a symbol in common: Ibid., 282–83.
His father, Sir John Evans: John Evans was knighted in 1892.
J. Evans (1943), 302.
Evans the Great: Horwitz (1981), 6.
“helped to lay the foundations”: Ibid., 9.
“a bit of a dunce”: J. Evans (1943), 93; also quoted in Horwitz (1981), 17.
On New Year’s Day 1858: J. Evans (1943), 93.
Arthur’s much younger half sister: Joan Evans (1893–1977), a noted antiquarian and art historian, was the daughter of John Evans by his third wife, Maria Millington Lathbury, born when her father was about seventy. Joan Evans was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1976.
“John Evans wrote in his wife’s diary”: J. Evans (1943), 94.
John Evans married a cousin: Ibid., 104.
Arthur won prizes in natural history: J. L. Myres, “Arthur John Evans, 1951–1941,” Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, 3:10 (Dec. 1941), 941; J. Evans (1943), 145.
graduating with first-class honors in 1874: D. B. Harden, Sir Arthur Evans, 1951–1941: A Memoir (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1983), 10.
he published his first scholarly article: Arthur John Evans, “On a Hoard of Coins Found at Oxford, with Some Remarks on the Coinage of the First Three Edwards,” Numismatic Chronicle 11 (1871), 264–82.
“Little Evans, son of John Evans the Great”: Horwitz (1981), 6.
He traversed the wild countryside: See, e.g., Ibid., 40.
the first of his two books on the Balkans: Arthur J. Evans, Through Bosnia and the Herzegóvina on Foot during the Insurrection, August and September 1875: With an Historical Review of Bosnia, and a Glimpse at the Croats, Slavonians, and the Ancient Republic of Ragusa (London: Longmans, Green, 1876). “Mind where you travel!”: Quoted in J. Evans (1943), 194.
In September 1878, Evans married: Ibid., 214.
now best remembered for his fiercely held views: See, e.g., MacGillivray (2001), 52ff.
Evans had horrified his father: J. Evans (1941), 216.
after seven weeks in a local jail: J. Evans (1943), 258.
In 1884, Evans was appointed keeper: Harden (1983), 9.
A diminutive man of barely five feet: Horwitz (1981), 1, puts Evans’s height at five foot two; MacGillivray (2001), 34, writes that he “never grew much beyond four feet.”
he nonetheless bristled: J. Evans (1943), 202.
“I don’t choose to be told”: Evans (1876), 312; also quoted in J. Evans (1943), 202.
“But … it is easy to see how valuable”: Evans (1876), 312; also quoted in J. Evans (1943), 202.
“His short sight”: J. Evans (1943), 144.
“like a jackdaw down a marrow bone”: Quoted in Horwitz (1981), 22.
the five months he and Margaret spent: Horwitz (1981), 64.
the widely accepted view of Greek history: This position was advanced by the historian George Grote in his seminal work, A History of Greece, published in twelve volumes between 1846 and 1856. For a discussion of Grote’s influence, see, e.g., MacGillivray (2001), 57ff.
and with it, recorded history: Of the world’s roughly six thousand languages, only a minority have writing systems, and many cultures from antiquity to the present day have relied entirely on oral tradition as a means of transmitting their own histories. However, orally transmitted texts almost inevitably undergo change—often considerable change—over time, through constant retelling. See, e.g., Margalit Fox, “Linguistic Reanalysis and Oral Transmission,” Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts 13:3 (1984), 217–38.
“at a comparatively low level of civilization”: Chadwick (1976), 180.
“is a network of well-organized kingdoms”: Ibid.
“When Homer describes a letter”: Ibid., 182.
his father and two colleagues had unearthed Stone Age implements: See, e.g., Horwitz (1981), 7ff.; MacGillivray (2001) 30ff.
“that human beings had lived on this earth”: MacGillivray (2001), 31.
at a Roman site in Trier: Horwitz (1981), 28.
“Such a conclusion”: Arthur J. Evans, Scripta Minoa: The Written Documents of Minoan Crete with Special Reference to the Archives of Knossos (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), 3.
“The discoveries of Schliemann”: Evans (1903), 51.
Evans had bought sixty acres: Horwitz (1981), 128.
“from the ancient name of the heath below”: Ibid., 76.
In 1890, Margaret had been diagnosed: MacGillivray (2001), 82.
In March 1893, Margaret Evans died: Horwitz (1981), 77.
“For the rest of his life he wrote on black-edged paper”: Ibid.
completed the next year, and Evans moved into it alone: J. Evans (1943), 306.
red or green jasper, carnelian, or amethyst: MacGillivray (2001), 74.
“a series of remarkable symbols”: Evans (1894), 274.
“not a mere copy of Egyptian forms”: Ibid., 371.
Schliemann’s bead gems: Ibid., 272.
“To Crete,” Evans wrote: Evans (1909), 10.
Crete’s earliest known inhabitants: Evans (1894), 275.
“It was clearly recognized by the Greeks themselves”: Ibid., 354.
Evans paid his first visit to Crete: J. Evans (1943), 310.
“In the evening some excitement”: Quoted in Ibid., 311.
“It is impossible to believe”: Evans (1894), 300.
“that the great days of the island”: Evans (1909), 10.
“a clue to the existence of a system”: Quoted in Horwitz (1981), 81. Evans made the announcement in November 1893, at a meeting of the Hellenic Society in London. See also Evans (1909), 9ff.
“an elaborate system of writing did exist”: Evans (1894), 274.
“linear and quasi-alphabetic”: Ibid.
“a kind of linear shorthand”: Ibid., 367.
“Of this linear system too”: Ibid., 363.
“One of the great islands of the world”: Homer, The Odyssey, Book 19, lines 172ff., translated by Robert Fitzgerald (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1963), 359.
tou Tseleve he Kephala: MacGillivray (2001), 92.
The reasoning, which Kalokairinos accepted: Ibid., 93.
In the early 1880s, William James Stillman: Ibid., 95ff.
Schliemann, too, had his eye on Kephala: Caroline Moore-head, Lost and Found: The 9,000 Treasures of Troy—Heinrich Schliemann and the Gold That Got Away (New York: Viking, 1994), 213ff.
“Nor can I pretend to be sorry”: Sir Arthur Evans, introduction to Emil Ludwig, Schliemann of Troy: The Story of a Goldseeker (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1931), 19, quoted in Horwitz (1981), 87.
“seemed to belong to an advanced system of writing”: Evans (1909), 17.
“On the hill of Kephala”: Ibid.
In 1894, after much negotiation: Myres (1941), 947.
“native Mahometans”: Evans (1899–1900), 5.
for 235 British pounds: J. Evans (1943), 319.
“striking corroboration”: Arthur J. Evans, “Further Discoveries of Cretan and Aegean Script: With Libyan and Proto-Egyptian Comparisons,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 17 (1897), 393.
“long before our first records”: Evans (1897), 393.
the last of the Turkish forces left the island in late 1899: J. Evans (1943), 326.
“after encountering every kind of obstacle”: Evans (1909), 17.
for 675 pounds: J. Evans (1943), 321.
he equipped himself with: Ibid., 329; MacGillivray (2001), 166–67.
a fleet of iron wheelbarrows: Evans (1899–1900), 68.
he set about disinfecting and whitewashing: J. Evans (1943), 329.
with the Union Jack flying: MacGillivray (2001), 175.
about 6100 B.C.: Horwitz (1981), 96. The date was ascertained by later archaeologists, using carbon-14 dating.
It was rebuilt and partly reoccupied: Evans (1909), 53.
a building larger than Buckingham Palace: Horwitz (1981), 232.
spread over six acres: Sir Arthur Evans, The Palace of Minos: A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos (London: Macmillan), vol. 1 (1921), v.
a small Egyptian statue, carved of diorite: Evans (1899–1900), 27.
The palace comprised hundreds of rooms: J. M. Christoforakis, Knossos Visitor’s Guide, 3rd ed. (Heraklion: n.d.), 27.
the 1900 season, which lasted nine weeks: Evans (1899–1900), 69.
30 workmen had grown to about 180: Ibid.
Evans employed both Christian and Muslim workers: Ibid.
In the course of the season, Evans’s workers unearthed: See, e.g., Myres (1901), 5; Evans (1899–1900), passim.
So delighted was Sir John: J. Evans (1941), 333.
“almost thrown into the shade”: Myres (1901), 6.
“a discovery which carries back”: Ibid.
“a kind of baked clay bar”: Quoted in J. Evans (1943), 330–31.
A similar account appears in Evans (1899–1900), 18.
“the dramatic fulfillment”: Evans (1909), vi.
On April 5: Evans (1899–1900), 18.
small bronze hinges: Ibid., 29.
“just struck the largest deposit yet”: Quoted in J. Evans (1943), 334.
between two and seven inches long: Arthur J. Evans, “Writing in Prehistoric Greece,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 30 (1900), 92.
sometimes fashioned around armatures of straw: Chadwick (1976), 18.
One very large rectangular tablet: Evans (1909), 48.
in use from about 2000 to 1650 B.C.: John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 12.
Evans came across only a single cache: Evans (1899–1900), 59.
“a new system of linear writing”: Evans (1900), 91.
“style of writing fundamentally different”: Ibid., 92.
used from about 1750 to 1450 B.C.: Chadwick (1976), 13.
“Evidently the tablets were supplied”: Sir Arthur Evans, The Palace of Minos, vol. 4 (1935), 695.
more than two thousand would be found there: Chadwick (1976), 15.
“the work of practised scribes”: AE letter to Sir John Evans, April 15, 1900. Quoted in J. Evans (1943), 333.
fingerprints and even occasional doodles: Chadwick (1976), 20, 25.
“We have here locked up for us”: Myres (1901), 6.
“The problems attaching to the decipherment”: Ibid.
By some estimates, only about 15 percent: Harald Haarman, Universalgeschichte der Schrift (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1990), 18ff.
“Decipherments are by far the most glamorous”: Maurice Pope, The Story of Archaeological Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphs to Linear B (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975), 9.
Diagrammed, they make a tidy four-cell table: The table is after E. J. W. Barber, Archaeological Decipherment: A Handbook (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 13. This typology of decipherment was first put forth by Johannes Friedrich in, e.g., Extinct Languages (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), translated by Frank Gaynor.
a Polynesian language still spoken on the island: www.ethnologue.com.
Weighing three-quarters of a ton: Simon Singh, The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), 205–6.
“the benefits that the Pharaoh Ptolemy had bestowed”: Singh (2000), 207.
the demotic script had been introduced: Andrew Robinson, The Story of Writing (London: Thames & Hudson, 1995), 16.
Born in 1773: Singh (2000), 207.
“Young was able to read fluently”: Ibid., 207–8.
“it would enable [him] to discover”: Ibid., 209.
the arrangement of the symbols in a cartouche was rarely fixed: Ibid., 210.
“Although he did not know it at the time”: Ibid.
Here are the actual sound-values: The chart is adapted from Ibid., 209.
“Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Ethiopic”: Ibid., 213.
“that he used it to record entries in his journal”: Ibid., 215.
then the cartouche so far would read: After Ibid.
stood for the consonant cluster “ms”: Robinson (1995), 33.
As Ventris’s biographer Andrew Robinson points out: Ibid., 101.
Rongorongo contains hundreds of logograms: Andrew Robinson, personal communication.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Dancing Men” cipher: Robinson (2002) also invokes this cipher in a discussion of archaeological decipherment.
the Rotokas alphabet of the Solomon Islands: Robinson (1995), 169; www.omniglot.com.
the thirty-three Cyrillic letters used in Russian: Coulmas (1996), 109.
the more than seventy characters of the Khmer alphabet: Robinson (1995), 169.
It will take our alien years of minute comparison: The three capital O’s are set, respectively, in the typefaces Edwardian Script, Matisse, and Jokerman. The next three letters are a capital O and Q, both in French Script, and a capital C in Edwardian Script. Andrew Robinson makes a similar point about the challenge of identifying variant letter-forms in The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris (London: Thames & Hudson, 2002b), 64–65.
“The individual signs of Linear B”: Kahn (1967), 919. This passage is also quoted in Singh (1999), 220–21.
years agonizing over the symbol : See, e.g., AEK to JFD, May 4, 1942, AEK Papers, PASP; Alice E. Kober, “The ‘Adze’ Tablets from Knossos,” American Journal of Archaeology 48:1 (1944), 65, note 2.
There were perhaps seventy scribes at Knossos: Chadwick (1976), 24.
it was not completed until 1951: Emmett L. Bennett Jr., The Pylos Tablets: A Preliminary Transcription (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951).
The Germans call this style Schlangenschrift: Thomas G. Palaima, personal communication.
“The Adventure of the Dancing Men”: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), with a preface by Christopher Morley, vol. 2, 511–26.
small vertical tick marks: This inscription is also reproduced in Robinson (1995), 111.
“documents of ‘lime-bark’ ”: Evans (1935), 673; see also Evans (1909), 108ff.
“The brown, half-burnt tablets”: Evans (1935), 673.
Nero was reported to have ordered the documents translated: Evans (1909), 109.
the precious unbaked records reduced to mud: See, e.g., Evans (1909), 43.
“In this way fire”: Evans (1899–1900), 56.
In both scripts, text was written from left to right: Evans (1935), 684.
“The conclusion has been drawn”: Ibid., 711.
filed neatly away by subject: Ibid., 694.
what appeared to Evans to be census data: Ibid., 694, 708.
Evans was able to work out the numerical system: Ibid., 691ff.
These often appeared next to numbers: Evans (1921), 46–47.
the “Armoury Deposit”: Evans (1935), 832.
more than eight thousand arrows inside: Evans (1909), 44.
depicting the trellises on which grapes were grown: Chadwick (1976), 124.
male and female animals: Evans (1935), 723, 801.
the elegant answer to this little puzzle: Chadwick (1967), 45.
logograms denoting vessels: Evans (1935), 727.
a tablet inscribed with pictures of humble pots like these: Chadwick (1967), 81ff.
David Kahn described so evocatively: Kahn (1967), 919.
By Evans’s initial count: Evans (1903), 53.
“The number of signs between word boundaries”: Barber (1974), 94–95.
modern Japanese writing: Coulmas (1996), 239ff.
Evans himself suspected as much: In a monograph on the early Cretan scripts (1903, 53), he wrote, “The characters seem to have had a syllabic value.”
“No effort will be spared”: Evans (1899–1900), 59, note 2.
only about two dozen pages: Evans (1909), 28–54.
a feat he wisely deemed impossible: Ibid., v.
Although Evans promised additional volumes: Ibid., x.
the Knossos tablets remained locked away: Horowitz (1981), 159.
Not only did he decline: Evans did, apparently, share particular tablets with certain trusted individual scholars. See, e.g., A. E. Cowley, “A Note on Minoan Writing,” in S. Casson, ed., Essays in Aegean Archaeology: Presented to Sir Arthur Evans in Honour of His 75th Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), 5–7.
he would publish reproductions of fewer than two hundred: Chadwick (1967), 18.
an act that brought down the wrath of Evans: Ibid.; Evans (1935), 681, note 1.
He remained keeper of the Ashmolean till 1908: Harden (1983), 14.
serving more or less simultaneously as president: Ibid., 20.
the local Boy Scout troop: Horwitz (1981), 167–68.
he took in two wards: Ibid.
digging on Crete became impossible for the duration: Ibid., 182.
taking an active hand in the negotiations: Ibid., 192ff.
some two dozen bedrooms: MacGillivray (2001), 137, gives the number of bedrooms at twenty-two; Horwitz (1981), 130, puts it at twenty-eight.
a sunken Roman bath: Horwitz (1981), 130.
a mosaic floor set in a labyrinth pattern: Ibid., 129.
two huge replicas, carved in mahogany: Ibid.
“Evans’ friends variously described Youlbury”: Ibid.
Completed in 1906: Harden (1983), 19.
The villa’s cellar was stocked: Horwitz (1981), 175.
the financier J. P. Morgan and the novelist Edith Wharton: Ibid., 204.
“On the hottest days of a Cretan summer”: Ibid., 5.
“Minos,” as Evans suspected: Evans (1909), iv–v, note 1.
Queen’s Megaron: MacGillivray (2001), 216ff.
Domestic Quarter: Horwitz (1981), 140.
a visiting Isadora Duncan danced: James S. Candy, A Tapestry of Life: An Autobiography (Braunton, UK: Merlin Books, 1984), 26. Candy was the tenant farmer’s son whom Evans took in as a ward. For the date, see Cathy Gere, Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 94.
Evans spent decades clearing rubble: See, e.g., MacGillivray (2001), 232ff.
newer materials like reinforced concrete: Gere (2009), 1.
long before early Hellenic peoples: Chadwick (1976), 4ff.
this one came from Evans himself: Evans (1909), 1ff.
superior to them in every conceivable way: Robinson (2002), 10, 33.
In his earliest writings on the Cretan scripts: See, e.g., Evans (1894), passim.
Evans became convinced that the civilization he had unearthed: Horwitz (1981), 2.
“As excavation went on”: Myres (1941), 949.
He called his island culture Minoan: Evans (1921), v.
a 2002 BBC television documentary: This is A Very English Genius, first broadcast on the BBC in 2002.
the language of Linear B was the indigenous Minoan tongue: Evans (1894), 353ff.
The few scholars who dared to question him: Chadwick (1967), 25.
Candidates ranged from the preposterous: See, e.g., Ibid., 26ff.
“Evans does not… seem to have had”: Ibid., 17.
“The throne, 
, is high-backed”: Evans (1935), 687.
“as an ideogram, and with a determinative meaning”: Ibid.
“it surely indicates a royal owner”: Ibid.
“its inclusion at any rate suggests”: Ibid., 701.
“It is itself apparently the derivative”: Ibid., 708.
a crucial clue hidden in this fragmentary tablet: Ibid., 799, note 3.
“the discoverer of the script did not achieve”: Myres (1941), 953.
On the evening of June 15: AEK gives the date of the lecture in a c. 1947 curriculum vitae, 4, AEK Papers, PASP.
She was by nature self-contained: AEK’s former student Eva Brann describes her thus in an unpublished biographical essay, “In Memoriam: Alice E. Kober” (2005), 3–5, AEK Papers, PASP.
speaking in public made her unbearably nervous: AEK letter to JFD, Sept. 8, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
she typically put each of her published papers through a good ten drafts: Kober’s doing so is widely attested in her correspondence and other papers. See, e.g., AEK letter to JFD, Oct. 18, 1946, in which she says, “I usually write an article over about ten times” and AEK letter to JFD, Oct. 8, 1947 (both, AEK Papers, PASP), in which she speaks of writing the fourth draft of an article (several more drafts will follow), adding, “I always discard the first ten pages of anything I write.”
Before her now was her typescript: Alice E. Kober, untitled Phi Beta Kappa lecture, Hunter College (June 15, 1946); unpublished manuscript, AEK Papers, PASP.
Physically, she was unprepossessing: Brann (2005), 15.
“On every kind of writing material known to man”: Kober, untitled Phi Beta Kappa lecture, Hunter College (June 15, 1946), 1, AEK Papers, PASP.
a cumbersome load of classes, as many as five at a time: See, e.g., AEK letter to JLM, Nov. 28, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP, in which she writes, “Next week … I’m getting examinations from all five of my classes—130 long papers.”
“the person on whom an astute bettor”: Thomas G. Palaima, “Alice Elizabeth Kober,” unpublished manuscript, University of Texas, Austin (n.d.).
one good article a year: AEK letter to JFD, July 1, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
noted together in 1927: Cowley (1927).
a discovery previously attributed to Ventris: See, e.g., Robinson (2002), 87–88.
“There is no certain clue to the language”: Alice E. Kober, “Form Without Meaning,” lecture to Yale Linguistics Club (May 3, 1948), 4, unpublished manuscript, AEK Papers, PASP. Italics added.
“To get further, it is necessary to develop a science of graphics”: Ibid., 12.
she declared she would make the Minoan scripts her lifework: E. Adelaide Hahn, “Alice E. Kober,” obituary note, Language 26:3 (1950), 442.
But in the coming years, on her own time: All coursework per AEK curriculum vitae (c. 1947), PASP.
“One can remain sure that no Champollion”: Quoted in Robinson (1995), 115.
ever-present cigarette at hand: Brann (2005), 4, speaks of AEK’s being a chain smoker.
“working hundreds of hours with a slide-rule”: Kober, “Form Without Meaning,” 13.
who savored detective stories: AEK refers several times in her correspondence to reading detective stories as a pastime; see, e.g., AEK letter to JFD, Dec. 5, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“method and order”: This was a favorite expression of Agatha Christie’s great detective Hercule Poirot. It was clear that AEK read Christie; in a published article not related to the Minoan scripts, “Tiberius, Master Detective,” Classical Outlook 22:4 (Jan. 1945), 37, she writes of Emperor Tiberius having used his “little grey cells”—another favorite term of Poirot’s—to resolve a murder investigation.
Alice Elizabeth Kober was born: Curiously, AEK’s birth certificate, New York City Department of Health No. 1162, AEK Papers, PASP, lists her given name as Adele; this name appears nowhere else in her records.
Her parents had come to the United States: Passenger records, SS Statendam, May 29, 1906, Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, AEK Papers, PASP.
The couple settled in Yorkville: AEK’s birth certificate lists the family’s address as 247 East 77th Street in Manhattan.
Census records list Franz’s occupation: United States census, Bronx, NY, 1930, AEK Papers, PASP; Franz Kober death certificate, New York City Department of Health No. AA37162, AEK Papers, PASP.
In the summer of 1924, she placed third: “Awards of University Scholarships,” New York Times, Aug. 22, 1924, 16.
she took part in the Classical Club and the German Club: Hunter College Yearbook (1928) 46, AEK Papers, PASP.
“As an undergraduate she impressed me”: Ernst Reiss, letter of reference accompanying AEK’s application for a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Nov. 1945, AEK Papers, PASP.
In 1928, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa: “843 to Get Degrees at Hunter College,” New York Times, June 14, 1928, 24.
she graduated magna cum laude: Ibid.
a major in Latin and a minor in Greek: AEK Hunter College transcript.
C’s and D’s in gym: Ibid.
followed by a Ph.D. in classics: Alice Elizabeth Kober, “The Use of Color Terms in the Greek Poets, Including All the Poets from Homer to 146 B.C. Except the Epigrammatists,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1932.
she was working the entire time: Job history per AEK’s Guggenheim grant application, Nov. 1945, 2, AEK Papers, PASP.
at an annual salary of $2,148: Salary history per ibid., 3.
“dry, refraining rigor”: Brann (2005), 7.
“She was, to coin a phrase”: Ibid., 15.
“Everybody seems to handle Hrozný”: AEK letter to JFD, Sept. 22, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“When you wrote me in May, 1946”: Cover letter accompanying AEK paper “The Language (or Languages) of the Minoan Scripts,” Classical Association of the Atlantic States (May 1946), unpublished manuscript, AEK Papers, PASP. Italics added.
Her life was her work: Brann (2005) and Palaima and Trombley (2003) make a similar point.
After her father’s death from stomach cancer: Franz Kober died on Dec. 17, 1935, at sixty-two. Death certificate, AEK Papers, PASP.
in the house Alice owned: In several places in her correspondence, AEK speaks of owning a house in Flatbush. See, e.g., AEK letter to JFD, Dec. 5, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
Kober did not write or lecture about the script publicly: The first example of scholarly work by AEK on the subject in the AEK Papers, PASP archives is her 1941 paper, “Some Comments on a Minoan Inscription (Linear Class B),” presented at a meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (Dec. 31, 1941), AEK Papers, PASP. An abstract of the paper was published the next year in the American Journal of Archaeology 46:1 (1942), 124.
“I have been working on the problems presented”: AEK letter to Mary H. Swindler, Jan. 29, 1941, AEK Papers, PASP.
“of the kind so successfully used”: Ibid., 12.
“As you are aware,” he says: Conan Doyle (1903), 522.
when Kober first turned her attention to the Cretan scripts: In a 1941 letter to Mary Swindler, editor of the American Journal of Archaeology, AEK writes of having worked on the Minoan scripts “for about ten years now.” Jan. 29, 1941, AEK Papers, PASP.
“thesaurus absconditus”: AEK to ELB, June 7, 1948, ELB Papers, PASP.
linguistic survivals like wine: All examples of linguistic survivals in British English are from Thomas Pyles, The Origins and Development of the English Language, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 313ff.
“would be of great importance to scholars”: Alice E. Kober, “The Gender of Nouns Ending in -inthos,” American Journal of Philology 63:3 (1942), 320–27.
pre-Hellenic words ran “into the thousands”: AEK to JFD, Feb. 1, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
Among the pre-Hellenic words Kober identified: Ibid., 321.
She had tried several times to tear herself away: AEK to JFD, May 22, 1942, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I’ve resigned myself”: Ibid.
who quickly appropriated Evans’s Villa Ariadne: Horwitz (1981), 247.
“No archaeologist, however able”: Alice E. Kober, “Some Comments on a Minoan Inscription (Linear Class B),” paper presented at meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (Dec. 31, 1941); abstract published in American Journal of Archaeology 46:1, 124.
This was also the case for the words “boy” and “girl”: Cowley (1927).
almost assuredly meant “total”: See, e.g., Alice E. Kober, “The Cryptograms of Crete,” Classical Outlook 22:8 (May 1945), 78.
Blissymbolics was invented after World War II: See, e.g., Charles Kasiel Bliss, Semantography: A Non-Alphabetical Symbol Writing, Readable in All Languages; a Practical Tool for General International Communication, Especially in Science, Industry, Commerce, Traffic, etc., and for Semantical Education, Based on the Principles of Ideographic Writing and Chemical Symbolism, 3 vols. (Sydney: Institute for Semantography, 1949).
the full solution: The answer to the Blissymbolics problem appears below:
“It is possible to prove, quite logically”: Kober, “Form Without Meaning,” 3–4.
“I am interested”: AEK to JLM, Oct. 29, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“We cannot speak of language, but only of script”: Alice E. Kober, “The Cretan Scripts,” lecture to the New York Classical Club (May 17, 1947); unpublished manuscript, AEK Papers, PASP; emphasis in original.
“in patterns of selection and arrangement”: Barber (1974), 145.
In making this statement, Barber credits Paul L. Garvin, On Linguistic Method: Selected Papers (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), 22ff., 78–79.
“each sign bears a relation”: Barber (1974), 117.
she would fill forty of them: All forty notebooks are contained in the AEK Papers, PASP archive.
“a distinctive fingerprint”: Barber (1974), 18.
“may be represented by from two”: Ibid., 108.
“You can figure out for yourself”: AEK to JFD, Oct. 27, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
by stacking two or more cards together: Kober explains the principle behind the cards in a letter to JS, Feb. 25, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Making all these files takes time”: AEK to HAM, Jan. 27, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“reveal a gentler side”: Palaima and Trombley (2003).
“I … teach in my spare time”: AEK letter to JFD, May 4, 1942, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Brooklyn College never did anything for me”: AEK to JFD, July 1, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
She shared an office with four other people: AEK to ELB, Feb. 16, 1949, AEK Papers, PASP.
asked to give private instruction in Horace: AEK curriculum vitae (c. 1947), 5, AEK Papers, PASP.
from 1944 onward, she brailled textbooks: Ibid.
It took as many as fifteen hours: “Adventure by Research Proves Ample Reward,” Brooklyn Eagle, April 28, 1946.
In a letter to her department chairman: AEK letter to “Professor Pearl” [Joseph Pearl, chairman of the Department of Classical Languages at Brooklyn College], May 21, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“The less said about teaching assignments, the better”: AEK letter to ELB, Feb. 16, 1949, ELB Papers, PASP.
she established the Hunter chapter of Eta Sigma Phi: AEK letter to “Professor Pearl,” March 20, 1944, AEK Papers, PASP.
she took her students excavating: AEK letter to JFD, Feb. 18, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I think I’m a good teacher”: AEK letter to JFD, Oct. 27, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Dear Miss Kober”: Fritzi Popper Green letter to AEK, June 27, 1944, AEK Papers, PASP.
“You know a great work”: Brann (2005), 15.
“We may find out if Helen of Troy”: Kober, untitled Phi Beta Kappa lecture (June 15, 1946), 16; italics added.
the newspapers announced the 132 recipients: See, e.g., “Guggenheim Fund Makes 132 Awards,” New York Times, April 15, 1946, 16.
“one of the ‘grand old men’ ”: AEK curriculum vitae (c. 1947), 6.
“Your learning is great”: Sir D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson letter to AEK, Aug. 25, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“The very notion of your problem”: Leonard Bloomfield letter to AEK, May 25, 1944, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I find she is in excellent physical condition”: Abraham L. Suchow, M.D., letter to HAM, April 8, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
She started work on a major review: This would become A. E. Kober (1946).
“It seems the sheerest balderdash”: AEK to JFD, July 20, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I hope he will not be too annoyed”: AEK to JS, Oct. 13, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Don’t cool off too much”: JFD letter to AEK, Nov. 9, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
He and Kober began corresponding in the early 1940s: The first known letter between them is from AEK to JFD, Nov. 15, 1941, AEK Papers, PASP.
She had long since mastered: AEK undergraduate transcript, Hunter College.
From 1942 to 1945, while teaching: AEK curriculum vitae (c. 1947), AEK Papers, PASP.
“against the happy day”: AEK letter to JLM, Dec. 14, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“homesick for Athens”: AEK to JFD, Dec. 14, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
She did manage a vacation: AEK letter to JFD, July 20, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
one of only two passing references to social life: Ibid. In the other, in a letter to JLM, July 29, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP, AEK describes having gone to the beach with friends; both she and her mother returned with “terrific sunburns.”
a letter she wrote to Daniel mid-voyage: AEK letter to JFD, July 20, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
she did them simultaneously: AEK letter to JFD, Dec. 5, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“clearing up the background”: AEK letter to HAM, Sept. 8, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“and some remnants of others”: AEK letter to Brooklyn College president Harry D. Gideonse, Sept. 23, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“It’s a thankless job”: AEK letter to JFD, Oct. 27, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“about a month of extremely intensive work”: Ibid.
“I had never before been able to work”: AEK letter to HAM, Dec. 12, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
The letter was to Sir John Linton Myres: Myres was knighted in 1943.
Myres had been Evans’s young assistant: Horwitz (1981), 80.
“a disorganized legacy”: Robinson (1995), 114.
Myres, who by the mid-1940s was elderly and ill himself: See, e.g., AEK letter to HAM, AEK Papers, PASP, in which she describes Myres as “crippled with arthritis” and “practically house-bound.” “Dear Professor Myers”: AEK letter to JLM, Nov. 20, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“If all the Minoan scripts aren’t syllabic”: AEK to JFD, Oct. 27, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“form without meaning”: Kober (1948a).
a series of tablets, reproduced by Evans in The Palace of Minos: His discussion of the “chariot” tablets can be found in Evans (1935), 786–98.
In Latin, verbs can be inflected: The verb paradigm and the noun paradigm that follows are adapted from Frederic M. Wheelock, Latin: An Introductory Course Based on Ancient Authors (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1956), 3, 8.
When Evans first studied the Knossos tablets: The first three examples are from Evans (1935), 714, the fourth from ibid., 736.
He decided that these sequences were inflections: See, e.g., ibid., 714.
“We have here, surely”: Ibid., 715.
“If a language has inflection, certain signs”: Kober (1945), 143–44.
“It was one thing to suggest”: Pope (1975), 159.
“When a syllabary is used [inflections] are bound to be obscured”: Ibid., 143, note 1.
On December 13, 1946, a letter with an Oxford return address: The letter, from JLM to AEK, is dated Nov. 27, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP; for its arriving on Dec. 13, see AEK to HAM, Dec. 13, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP; for it taking an hour before Kober dared open it, see AEK to JLM, Dec. 17, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Please let me know your plans”: JLM to AEK, Ibid.
“My fondest hopes [have] materialized”: AEK to JLM, Dec. 17, 1946.
“In a little over a month”: AEK to JLM, Feb. 6, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
she was somewhat afraid to fly: This is amply documented throughout Kober’s correspondence, e.g., AEK to JLM, Jan. 30, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP; AEK to JLM, May 1, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
of such poor quality that it would barely take ink: See, e.g., AEK to JLM, July 7, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP. Palaima and Trombley (2003) also raise the issue of substandard paper.
“It was quite bearable”: AEK to HAM, June 23, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
84, Charing Cross Road: Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road (New York: Grossman, 1970).
when they began corresponding, in early 1947: The first known letter between them is JS to AEK, Jan. 6, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Dear Miss Kober,” Sundwall wrote: Ibid.
“Of all the people in the world”: AEK to JS, Jan. 28, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“coffee in the bean”: AEK to JS, Feb. 25, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
she mailed him an orange: AEK to JS, Oct. 13, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Höffentlich sind Sie nicht Teetotaler”: AEK to JS, March 12, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Mother and I decided”: AEK to JS, Oct. 13, 1974, AEK Papers, PASP.
Sundwall’s publication of the contraband inscriptions: Johannes Sundwall, “Minoische Rechnungsurkunden,” Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum (4:4, 1932) and Altkretische Urkundenstudien (Åbo: Åbo Akademi, 1936).
Now, a later book of Sundwall’s: Knossisches in Pylos: Johannes Sundwall, Knossisches in Pylos (Åbo: Åbo Akademi, 1940).
after searching for more than a year: AEK to JS, Jan. 26, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“spent two very happy days”: AEK to JS, Feb. 6, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I’ve timed myself”: AEK to JLM, Feb. 8, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
when her fingers were stiff with cold: Ibid.
“ [Myres] mentions having a ‘severe chill’ ”: AEK to JFD, Feb. 25, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I’ll be content to copy what I can”: AEK to JLM, March 6, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
On the seventh: AEK to JLM, Feb. 6, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
She planned to learn Ancient Egyptian: AEK to HAM, March 8, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Everything that’s been written on Minoan”: AEK to JLM, Feb. 8, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
the issue that contained it: AEK to HAM, March 3, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
Titled “Inflection in Linear Class B”: Alice E. Kober, “Inflection in Linear Class B: 1—Declension,” American Journal of Archaeology 50:2 (1946), 268–76.
“Let us suppose, for instance”: Ibid., 150; boldface added.
most Minoan words were three or four characters: Alice E. Kober, “The Minoan Scripts: Fact and Theory,” American Journal of Archaeology 52:1 (1948), 97.
Since many of the tablets were inventories: Kober (1946a), 269.
Kober built a paradigm: Adapted from ibid., 272.
“Kober’s triplets”: Robinson (2002), 69.
a hypothetical example from Latin: Adapted from Kober (1946a), 275.
“If this interpretation is correct”: Ibid., 276.
“I’ve been devoting all the time available”: AEK to HAM, April 2, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
It had taken her five years: AEK to HAM, Jan. 27, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I had a most delightful time”: AEK to JFD, April 30, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I can hardly realize I have seen him”: AEK to JFD, May 6, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
The book was due out in early 1948: AEK to JFD, April 30, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
Kober left England on April 17: AEK to JLM, Jan. 20, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
On April 25, when the Queen Elizabeth docked: AEK to JFD, April 30, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I have so much to do”: Ibid.
Dear Mr. Moe: AEK to HAM, Jan. 30, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
The letter from the foundation gave no reason: HAM to AEK, March 28, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I am in a way relieved”: AEK to HAM, April 2, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
Kober wrote a similar letter: AEK to CWB, Nov. 20, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
As the story went: A précis of the story appears, e.g., in Kober (1946c).
Blegen arrived in Pylos in April 1939: William A. McDonald and Carol G. Thomas, Progress into the Past: The Rediscovery of Mycenaean Civilization, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 229ff.
a vault in the Bank of Greece: Carl W. Blegen, introduction to Bennett (1951), viii.
Kober’s letter to Blegen: AEK to CWB, Nov. 20, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“The difficulties in the way of granting it”: CWB to AEK, Dec. 9. 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I am a pessimist”: AEK to JLM, June 26, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
bringing the number at her disposal: AEK to HAM, Sept. 8, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
manuscripts on Minoan sent in “by crack-pots”: JFD to AEK, Sept. 3, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I rather consider myself an expert”: AEK to JFD, Sept. 4, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“in academic harness”: AEK to JFD, Sept. 22, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“It must be quite wonderful”: AEK to JS, June 3, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
Daniel seized on the idea: JFD to AEK, Sept. 11, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Compared to you a hurricane”: AEK to JFD, Sept. 22, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
to be known as the Center for Minoan Linguistic Research: JFD to AEK, June 19, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“You are the person in this country”: JFD to AEK, Sept. 11, 1947, AEK Papers, PAS
“I have a job which, while far from ideal”: AEK to JFD, Sept. 18, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Dangling … the Institute in front of my nose”: AEK to JFD, Sept. 22, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“a big salary for a woman teacher,” more than $6,000: Ibid.
“I know enough about academic salaries for women”: Ibid.
By chance Roland Kent: JFD to AEK, Sept. 19, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
Greek phonology: JFD to AEK, Dec. 6, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Don’t count on it too much”: JFD to AEK, Sept. 19, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Your latest letter … has me sitting here”: AEK to JFD, Dec. 8, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
from 1938, “as might be expected”: AEK to Mary Swindler, Oct. 10, 1945, AEK Papers, PASP.
she had to enlist the aid of the Czech Consulate: AEK to JFD, July 20, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Everybody is interested in the Minoan script”: JFD to AEK, Sept. 7, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“One of the remarkable things”: AEK to JFD, Sept. 8, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“About the article”: AEK to JFD, Sept. 22, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
hard at work on the fourth draft: AEK to JFD, Oct. 8, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“the sixth draft (durn it!)”: AEK to JFD, Oct. 18, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
a “slight discovery”: AEK to JFD, Dec. 14, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
historians have attributed it to Ventris: Michael Ventris, Work Note 1 (Jan. 28, 1951). In Michael Ventris, Work Notes on Minoan Language Research and Other Unedited Papers, edited by Anna Sacconi (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1988), 143.
Senatus Populusque Romanus: This example also appears in Robinson (2002), 88.
She made the discovery on December 14: In her letter to Daniel, Dec. 14, 1947, Kober writes of having made her discovery “to-day.”
“Too bad I didn’t discover it”: Ibid.
which begin that March: The first letter between them in the AEK Papers, PASP archive is MV to AEK, March 26, 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
“I’m extremely glad to have them”: MV to AEK, May 23, 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
William T. M. Forbes: His first known letter is WTMF to AEK, Oct. 19, 1945, AEK Papers, PASP.
the Minoan language was a form of Polynesian: See, e.g., WTMF to AEK, Oct. 31, 1945, AEK Papers, PASP.
“But now back to the Lepidoptera for a time”: WTMF to AEK, May 1, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“No!” “Right!!”: Kober’s margin notes in, respectively, WTMF to AEK, Oct. 19, 1945, and April 2, 1946; AEK Papers, PASP.
“I should be very interested to hear”: MV to AEK, March 26, 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
a belief he had first made public: M.G.F. Ventris, “Introducing the Minoan Language,” American Journal of Archaeology 44:4 (1940), 494–520.
“At the moment I’m engaged”: MV to AEK, n.d., but demonstrably before May 23, 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
“Rivalry has no place in true scholarship”: AEK to ELB, Feb. 12, 1949, ELB Papers, PASP.
“Please send me FAST”: JFD to AEK, Dec. 3, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I am indeed astonished”: Franklin Edgerton to AEK, Dec. 5, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Everybody tells me this job”: AEK to JFD, Dec. 6, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
Sir John Myres wanted her to help lobby: See, e.g., AEK to JLM, Oct. 21, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“First Class. Ouch!”: AEK to JFD, April 24, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Six months is ample time”: AEK to JFD, Sept. 18, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
Myres would outlive her: Myres died on March 6, 1954.
“The basic distinction between fact and theory”: Kober (1948b), 82.
Its use in archaeological decipherment dates: Pope (1975), 163.
“was the idea of constructing such a grid”: Ibid.; italics added.
“People often say”: Ibid., 102.
“Let us face the facts”: Ibid., 102–3.
a “slight setback”: JFD to AEK, Dec. 19, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP, for quotation; AEK to JFD, Dec. 21, 1947, for its having been a special-delivery letter.
“You are no. 2”: JFD to AEK, Dec. 19, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Don’t you think a lot of the opposition”: AEK to JFD, Dec. 21, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“The fact that you are a woman”: JFD to AEK, Dec. 24, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“weak, lazy, and impressionable”: Ibid.
“I am not being unduly bitter”: Ibid.
the genus professoricus [sic]: The correct form is “genus professoricum.”
“I am limiting my activities”: JFD to AEK, Feb. 14, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I have bad news”: JFD to AEK, May 4, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Well, it was fun while it lasted”: AEK to JFD, May 6, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
Penn wanted to go ahead: JFD to AEK, June 2, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
she was named a research associate: Mrs. William S. Godfrey, Penn University Museum secretary, to AEK, July 8, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
a “mutual aid society”: AEK to JFD, July 1, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“If it works as we hope”: AEK to HAM, July 17, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
At the top of the guest list: AEK to JFD, July 1, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
The two men had begun corresponding: Robinson (2002), 44.
Even his everyday handwriting: Postcard from MV to JLM, Jan. 19, 1954, MV Papers, PASP.
“Mr. Ventris would have no trouble”: AEK to JLM, July 8, 1948. Quoted in Thomas G. Palaima, Elizabeth I. Pope, and F. Kent Reilly III, Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Writing: The Parallel Lives of Michael Ventris and Linda Schele and the Decipherment of Mycenaean and Mayan Writing, exhibition catalogue, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas (Austin: Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory, 2000).
a long voyage through Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey: JFD to AEK, Aug. 13, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
to scout sites for future excavations: “J. F. Daniel 3d Dies; Archaeologist, 38,” New York Times, Dec. 19, 1948, 76.
he was due to set sail for Athens: Ibid.
“Until it is,” she wrote: AEK to HAM, July 17, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
Kober found Myres even frailer: AEK to JFD, Aug. 9, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Lady Myres keeps him in bed”: AEK to JFD, Aug. 24, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“is in perfect chaos”: Ibid.
“I only hope he accepts my corrections”: Ibid.
Kober understood that Myres was living: AEK to JS, Feb. 11, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I’ve had enough trouble”: AEK to JFD, Aug. 4, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Two deans … still wish”: JFD to AEK, Aug. 31, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“He wants to use my classification”: AEK to JFD, Aug. 4, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I am really very much in awe”: AEK to JLM, Dec. 17, 1946, AEK Papers, PASP.
“still thinks … that there are no cases”: AEK to JS, Oct. 3, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Somewhat against my better judgement”: AEK to ELB, Oct. 3, 1948, ELB Papers, PASP.
On September 18: AEK to JLM, Sept. 26, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I’ve been home almost a month now”: AEK to JLM, Oct. 14, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
All this left her barely an hour a day: AEK to ELB, Oct. 13, 1948, ELB Papers, PASP.
“Wishing you the best of luck”: JDF to AEK, Sept. 7, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
On December 18, 1948: New York Times, Dec. 19, 1948.
“The news came as a terrible shock”: AEK to JLM, Dec. 26, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I did not write more about Daniel”: AEK to JS, March 19, 1949, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I’m neck-deep in Sir John’s manuscript”: AEK to ELB, Nov. 22, 1948, ELB Papers, PASP; italics added.
A sample of John Myres’s handwriting from 1948: JLM to MV, March 7, 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
“He showed slides”: AEK to JFD, May 15, 1942, AEK Papers, PASP.
The symbols 
, 
, and 
, for instance: ELB to AEK, April 19, 1948, ELB Papers, PASP.
appeared at Knossos but not at Pylos: AEK postcard to ELB, May 15, 1949, ELB Papers, PASP.
“Dr. Bennett … is a very agreeable young man”: AEK to JS, June 22, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
Bennett, who had done his doctoral dissertation: Emmett L. Bennett Jr., “The Minoan Linear Script from Pylos,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 1947.
“Bennett suggested I get his dissertation”: AEK to JFD, June 3, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“There can be no doubt now”: AEK to ELB, June 3, 1948, ELB Papers, PASP.
“If there is a possibility”: AEK to ELB, June 7, 1948, ELB Papers, PASP.
“Happy, happy day!”: AEK to ELB, Nov. 22, 1948, ELB Papers, PASP.
“If Bennett is willing”: AEK to JLM, Oct. 29, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“a large, well-tabled room”: ELB to AEK, May 10, 1949, ELB Papers, PASP.
“the last time I did it”: ELB to AEK, June 14, 1949, ELB Papers, PASP.
“There are a few signs that must be added”: AEK to ELB, June 22, 1948, ELB Papers, PASP.
In 1949, Kober came out with a noteworthy article: Alice E. Kober, “ ‘Total’ in Minoan (Linear Class B),” Archiv Orientálni 17 (1949), 386–98.
“I shall probably give the problem a rest”: MV to AEK, Feb. 22, 1949, MV Papers, PASP.
“I just finished my last set of examinations”: AEK to ELB, June 22, 1948, ELB Papers, PASP.
“About my errors. I must apologize”: Ibid.
“I am ashamed at the number of errors”: AEK to JS, Feb. 21, 1949, AEK Papers, PA
“This year has been a nightmare”: AEK to JLM, May 2, 1949, AEK Papers, PASP.
an uncompromising regimen of dieting: E. Adelaide Hahn (1950), 443.
“If you have the time”: ELB to AEK, Aug. 12, 1949, ELB Papers, PASP.
with things like packaged soup: AEK to JLM, June 8, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
the nearest post office was more than a mile away: AEK to JS, Nov. 8, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP; AEK to JLM, June 15, 1949, AEK Papers, PASP.
“because he makes so many little errors”: AEK to JS, Nov. 19, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP. Original in German; my translation.
“I never know when proofs are coming”: AEK to ELB, June 30, 1949, ELB Papers, PASP.
“School is just finishing”: AEK to JLM, June 15, 1949, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Sorry that at times”: AEK to JLM, Oct. 24, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I want to get back to my own job”: AEK to JLM, Nov. 7, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“What I would like to do right now”: AEK to JLM, Nov. 10, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Now, my reason for this letter”: AEK to JLM, Nov. 28, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
In early July 1949: AEK to JS, AEK Papers, PASP.
On July 27, she was ordered to the hospital: AEK to JLM Aug. 30, 1949, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I’m sorry,” she told Bennett: Ibid.
“I managed to acquire something”: AEK to JLM, Nov. 7, 1949, AEK Papers, PASP.
it was whispered among the women in the family: Patricia Graf, personal communication.
It has also been suggested: Hahn (1950).
In a short letter from late August: AEK to JS, Aug. 31, 1949, AEK Papers PASP.
“It is too bad”: AEK to JLM, Aug. 30, 1949, AEK Papers, PASP.
a second, six-week hospital stay: AEK to ELB, Oct. 29, 1949, ELB Papers, PASP.
“Professor Blegen at last relented”: AEK to HAM, Oct. 29, 1949, AEK Papers, PASP.
“I hope I am now”: AEK to ELB, Oct. 29, 1949, ELB Papers, PASP.
By return mail: ELB to AEK, Nov. 1, 1949, ELB Papers, PASP.
Kober was officially on sick leave: AEK to JLM, Nov. 7, 1949, AEK Papers, PASP.
“My health is, unfortunately”: Ibid.
“I haven’t done anything about going to Greece”: Ibid.
Brooklyn College promoted her: Harry D. Gideonse to AEK, Jan. 19, 1950, AEK Papers, PASP.
Writing to Myres that month: AEK to JLM, Feb. 18, 1950, AEK Papers, PASP.
In a brief, scrawled letter to Sundwall: AEK to JS, March 4, 1950, AEK Papers, PASP.
That day, in a postcard to Bennett: AEK postcard to ELB, March 4, 1950, ELB Papers, PASP.
“still busy checking”: AEK postcard to ELB, April 4, 1950, ELB Papers, PASP.
That spring, a long article by Kober: This is Kober (1950).
her last publication: A bibliography of Kober’s work appears in Sterling Dow, “Minoan Writing,” American Journal of Archaeology, 58:2 (1954), 83–84.
“In the ultimate analysis”: Kober (1950), 293–95; italics added.
Kober wrote an astonishing letter to Myres: AEK to JLM, April 17, 1950, AEK Papers, PASP.
On the morning of May 16, 1950: AEK death certificate (No. 156-50 310216, New York City Department of Health); “Prof. Alice Kober of Brooklyn Staff,” obituary, New York Times, May 17, 1950, 29.
plus one younger schoolmate: Leonard Cottrell, “Michael Ventris and His Achievement,” Antioch Review 25:1 (1965), 14.
“Did you say the tablets”: Robinson (2002), 21.
Edward Francis Vereker Ventris: Marjorie Dent Candee, ed., Current Biography Yearbook (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1958), 566.
born in Wheathampstead: Cottrell (1965), 13.
On his father’s side, Ventris was descended: Robinson (2002), 16.
His paternal grandfather: Robinson (2002b), 16.
“Overshadowed by illness”: Ibid.
numbered among her friends: Ibid., 29; Palaima, Pope, and Reilly (2000), 7.
Edward Ventris suffered from tuberculosis: Robinson (2002), 17.
He attended a boarding school in Gstaad: Ibid.; Cottrell (1965), 14.
French, German, and the local Swiss German dialect: Robinson (2002).
he bought and devoured Die Hieroglyphen: Palaima, Pope, and Reilly (2000), 7.
much has been made of his prodigious ability: See, e.g., Cottrell (1965), 14; A Very English Genius (2002).
the “critical period” for language acquisition: See, e.g., Margalit Fox, Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 125ff.
“How do you come to be so expert”: Robinson (2002), 117.
“I heard it all”: Jean Overton Fuller to Andrew Robinson, May 2002, MV Papers, PASP.
Jung, Fuller wrote, “had complicated matters”: Ibid.
“I think they rather thought me”: MV to LV, World War II–era letter dated only “Wednesday night” [1942], MV Papers, PASP.
a middling student: Robinson (2002); A Very English Genius (2002).
night after night, after lights-out: A Very English Genius (2002).
From about 1932 on: Ibid.
The couple formally divorced: Robinson (2002), 26; A Very English Genius (2002).
“I count myself extraordinarily fortunate”: Quoted in Robinson (2002), 28–29.
“Dear Sir,” begins one letter: MV to AJE, Easter 1940, MV Papers, PASP.
He would discreetly neglect to tell the editors: Cottrell (1965), 19.
forced to withdraw Michael from Stowe: Robinson (2002), 30; A Very English Genius (2002).
He wrote to his mother’s friend Marcel Breuer: Robinson (2002), 30.
Ventris enrolled there in January 1940: Ibid., 31.
“She had already lost her brother”: Ibid.
“The coroner’s verdict”: Ibid., 40.
To the end of his life, Robinson added: Ibid.
He tore up two drafts: Ibid., 32.
“Dear Sir: I am enclosing an article”: MV to American Journal of Archaeology, Sept. 22, 1940, MV Papers, PASP.
“close to worthless”: Palaima (n.d.), 17.
she did so as an act of mercy: Ibid.
a classmate a few years older than he: Robinson (2002), 42.
“It looks as if, in the ordinary way”: Ibid., 42–43.
Ventris and Lois married: Ibid., 43.
“the nicest present”: Quoted in Robinson (2002b), 45.
Called up in the summer of 1942: Robinson (2002), 43.
“Darling Lois”: MV to LV, World War II–era letter dated only “Scarborough, Sunday” [probably late 1942], MV Papers, PASP.
“My knowledge is gradually getting on”: MV to LV, World War II–era letter dated only “Wednesday night” [1942], MV Papers, PASP.
it interested him far more than actual flying did: Cottrell (1965), 18.
“It’s a desk job, really”: A Very English Genius (2002).
“on one occasion he horrified his captain”: Cottrell (1965), 18–19.
because of his foreign-language prowess: Robinson (2002), 47.
a daughter, Tessa, had been born: Ibid.
He also met with Myres: Ibid.; JLM to MV, April 23, 1948; MV to JLM, May 6, 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
Ventris and Lois graduated with honors: Robinson (2002), 57.
“Dear Sir John”: MV to JLM, dated only “Monday night” [1948], MV Papers, PASP.
he was immensely pleased: See, e.g., JLM to MV, March 7, 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
“The man who may decipher Linear B”: Cottrell (1965), 29.
In September 1949: Robinson (2002b), 73.
“He was,” she wrote: Prue Smith, The Morning Light: A South African Childhood Revalued (Cape Town: David Philip, 2000), 239.
“a strange architectural drawing aid”: Ibid.
“with instant accuracy”: Ibid.
working feverishly on the script during lunch breaks: Robinson (2002b), 74.
“It is hard to see”: Ibid.
translating the replies as needed: Ventris (1988), 32.
At his own considerable expense: Ibid.
“I have good hopes”: Ibid., 108.
Then, in the summer of 1950: Robinson (2002b), 76.
made out handsomely in the stock market: Ibid., 74.
soon quit his job: Ibid., 77.
Work Note 1: Ventris (1988), 135ff.
Ventris independently replicates: Ibid., 143.
his own first attempt on paper at a phonetic grid: Ibid.
Ventris had previously built a three-dimensional “grid”: Robinson (2002b), 81.
“must be regarded as a failure”: Pope (1975), 164.
“a suspicious … official asked him”: Robinson (2002b), 83.
the first established signary for the script: Bennett (1951), 82.
His signary looked much like this: As depicted here, the signary includes slight modifications based on later findings. After Bennett (1951), 82; Robinson (2002a), 88.
“represent the values which seem the most useful”: Ventris (1988), 315.
Even in his third grid: Pope (1975), 164.
“I must say I was slightly disappointed”: MV to JLM, Jan. 28, 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
“alternative name-endings”: MV to AEK, Good Friday [March 26], 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
including 
and 
: Pope (1975), 166.
“which on the face of it”: MV to JLM, Aug. 28, 1951, MV Papers, PASP.
a conference on the ancient Near East: MV to JLM, Sept. 11, 1951, MV Papers, PASP.
“I was frankly rather disappointed”: MV to JLM, Oct. 5, 1951, MV Papers, PASP.
The words unique to Knossos included: Adapted from Kober (1946), 274.
Perhaps, Ventris conjectured in early 1952: MV to JLM, Feb. 28, 1959, MV Papers, PASP.
“only a little adjustment”: Ibid.
“the theory that Minoan could be Greek”: Ventris (1940), 494.
“all your help in the B volume”: JLM to AEK, Oct. 26, 1948, AEK Papers, PASP.
the published book gave scant indication: Evans (1952), vi. Myres’s acknowledgment reads as follows: “Thanks are due … to Dr. Alice Kober, of Brooklyn College, New York, who came twice to Oxford to study the unpublished texts, revised the Vocabulary, contributed to the Inventory of tablets according to their contents, read the proofs, and contributed many valuable suggestions. She was ready to go also to Crete, if the Candia Museum had been restored so as to make the original tablets accessible.”
between about the seventh and the second centuries B.C.: Pope (1975), 123.
A handful of Cypriot characters looked like Linear B signs: Adapted from Cowley (1927).
“had no results”: AEK to JLM, Sept. 18, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
Evans tried substituting Cypriot values: Evans (1935), 799.
“those who believe that the Minoan Cretans”: Ibid., note 3.
do-we-lo-se: Pope (1975), 170.
did not appear at the ends of Linear B words: Ibid.
Ventris pinpointed additional words: The examples are from Ventris (1988), 337ff.
“In the chains of deduction”: Ibid., 327.
“These may well turn out”: Ibid.
“Lois Ventris, whom we always called Betts”: Smith (2000), 240. In her memoir, Smith spells Lois’s nickname “Bets,” but it is clear from Ventris’s own correspondence (e.g., MV to ELB, May 31, 1955, PASP) that the correct spelling was “Betts.”
after reworking his script several times: Robinson (2002b), 106.
The broadcast, as Andrew Robinson notes: Ibid., 104–5.
high, light, cultured, melodious: A Very English Genius (2002).
“For half a century, [the] Knossos tablets”: Michael Ventris, “Deciphering Europe’s Earliest Scripts,” text of BBC Radio talk, first broadcast July 1, 1952. In Ventris (1988), 363–67.
Chronologically, the Greek dialect they contained: Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, “Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 73 (1953), 90.
Even Bennett and Myres remained unpersuaded: Robinson (2002b), 106.
“a frivolous digression”: Ventris (1988), 327.
He got in touch with Myres: Robinson (2002b), 111.
“He sat as usual in his canvas chair”: Chadwick (1958), 69.
“I think we must accept the fact”: Robinson (2002b), 111.
“Dear Dr. Ventris”: JC to MV, July 13, 1952; in Ventris (1988), 352–53.
in the Greek of Homer’s time, “the” was a rarity: Chadwick (1958), 70.
playing the dogged Watson: Robinson (2002b), 14.
“Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives”: Ventris and Chadwick (1953), 84–103.
Another, published in the British journal Antiquity: John Chadwick, “Greek Records in the Minoan Script,” Antiquity 108 (1953), 196–206; includes “A Note on Decipherment Methods,” by Michael Ventris.
They also began work on a massive book: Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek: Three Hundred Selected Tablets from Knossos, Pylos and Mycenae with Commentary and Vocabulary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956).
“had attacks of cold feet”: Chadwick (1958), 70.
“Every other day I get so doubtful”: Quoted in Ibid.
“I feel it would be appropriate”: Quoted in Robinson (2002b), 117.
The character 
, for instance: Ibid., 128.
known officially by the unromantic name P641: This drawing of the “tripod tablet,” made by Ventris, was first published in his article “King Nestor’s Four-Handled Cups: Greek Inventories in the Minoan Script,” Archaeology 7:1 (Spring 1954), 18.
“tripod cauldron(s) of Cretan workmanship”: Robinson (2002b), 119.
“Is coincidence excluded?”: Quoted in Chadwick (1958), 81.
the “great state of excitement”: Ibid.
“Looks hard to beat!”: Robinson (2002b), 121.
On seeing it, the audience: Chadwick (1958), 88.
It “went off all right”: Ibid.
He spoke before the king of Sweden: Robinson (2002b), 131.
He spoke at Oxford: Ibid., 117.
He spoke at Cambridge: Ibid.
the Times of London carried an account: Times, June 25, 1953, 1.
“the Everest of Greek archaeology”: Robinson (2002b), 122.
“Whichever is regarded as the greatest”: Pope (1975), 9.
“the label ‘Minoan’ had been out of date”: Chadwick (1958), 73.
“Offers to join the academic world”: Robinson (2002b), 137.
his mere three years of schoolboy Greek: Thomas G. Palaima, personal communication.
“After the Times article”: Robinson (202b), 126.
“By 1956, after fourteen years”: Ibid., 148–49.
In July 1955: Ibid., 140.
“I shan’t be able to devote”: Ibid., 141.
“Information for the Architect”: Ibid., 142.
“There were almost no books”: Ibid.
“One might ring up”: Quoted in Ibid., 145–46.
“that he himself saw no future”: Ibid., 147.
“was aware,” Robinson writes: Ibid., 148.
an “extraordinary, shocking, abject, private letter”: Ibid., 149.
“I have had a couple of weeks”: Quoted in Ibid., 149–50.
Very late at night: Ibid., 151.
He apparently told his family: A Very English Genius (2002).
He collided with a parked truck and was killed instantly: Coroner’s inquisition, Hertford district of Hertfordshire, Sept. 11, 1956, MV Papers, PASP.
At the coroner’s inquest: Ibid.; Robinson (2002b), 151.
“I don’t think he committed suicide”: A Very English Genius (2002).
“series of fundamental articles”: Michael Ventris, “The Decipherment of the Mycenaean Script,” Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Classical Studies (Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1958), 72.
“was probably too restrained”: Robinson (2002b), 72.
“had no results”: AEK to JLM, Sept. 18, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Every one of Kober’s inferences”: Pope (1975), 162.
“alternative name-endings”: MV to AEK, Good Friday [March 26], 1948, MV Papers, PASP.
In the margin of his letter: WTMF to AEK, May 1, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
a phonetic grid containing more than twenty Linear B characters: Thomas G. Palaima, “Scribes, Scribal Hands and Palaeography,” in Yves Duhoux and Anna Morpurgo Davies, eds., A Companion to Linear B: Mycenaean Texts and Their World, vol. 2 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 2011), 51, note 29.
“we may only find out”: Kober, untitled lecture (June 15, 1946), 16.
“As for what the humanities”: Robinson (2002b), 157.
“The Criminal Courts can only tell us”: Murray Kempton, “When Constabulary Duty’s to Be Done,” New York Newsday (May 11, 1990).
“the movement of goods”: Cynthia W. Shelmerdine, “Mycenaean Society,” in Yves Duhoux and Anna Morpurgo Davies, eds., A Companion to Linear B: Mycenaean Texts and Their World, vol. 1 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 2008), 115.
“Almost all parts of Greece”: J. L. García Ramón, “Mycenaean Onomastics,” in Duhoux and Morpurgo Davies (2011), 242.
their combined population: Shelmerdine (2008), 136.
about forty Linear B tablets were uncovered: Robinson (2002b), 117–18.
as recently as 2010: John Noble Wilford, “Greek Tablet May Shed Light on Early Bureaucratic Practices,” New York Times, April 5, 2011, D3.
Scholars have conjectured: Palaima (2011), 116ff.
“Mycenaean state bureaucracy”: Shelmerdine (2008), 127.
“His status,” Shelmerdine explains: Ibid., 128.
As Shelmerdine points out: Ibid., 128–29.
rowers, as well as smallholders: Ibid., 130.
hekwetai: Ibid., 131.
“collectors”: Ibid., 132.
the scribes themselves: Palaima, “Scribes, Scribal Hands and Palaeography,” in Duhoux and Morpurgo Davies (2011), 121ff.
At the regional level: Shelmerdine (2008), 133–34.
records the acquisition of a slave: Yves Duhoux, “Mycenaean Anthology,” in Duhoux and Morpurgo Davies (2008), 252.
rations of grain (wheat or barley), figs, and bedding: See, e.g., Shelmerdine (2008), 122, 138, 147.
“The tablets reinforce the view”: Ibid., 138.
“Slave status is suggested”: Ibid., 139.
one such group is described as “captives”: Ibid.
“are identified by [non-Greek] ethnic adjectives”: Ibid.
“Gladly Welcome”: García Ramón (2011), 220ff.
while “highly expressive”: Ibid., 226.
“Goat-Head”: Ibid., 226–27.
the premonetary society of Mycenae: See, e.g., Shelmerdine (2008), 145.
A group of eight hundred tablets from Knossos: Chadwick (1976) 127.
the names of individual oxen: García Ramón (2011), 229; Chadwick (1958), 119.
At Knossos, an office in the east wing: Shelmerdine (2008), 127.
“The most extraordinary figure for wheat”: Chadwick (1976), 117–18.
“The absence of any record of the grain harvest”: Ibid., 118.
The central palaces exacted payment: See, e.g., Shelmerdine (2008), 145ff.; J. T. Killen, “Mycenaean Economy,” in Duhoux and Morpurgo Davies (2008), 189–90.
members of certain professions, including bronzesmiths: Shelmerdine (2008), 146.
Four metals are mentioned: Bernabé and Luján (2008), 227.
“used for a variety of purposes”: Ibid.
the heads of spears and javelins: Ibid., 216.
Such spearheads, the two scholars point out: Ibid.
the nine-legged tables: Ibid., 202.
often inlaid with ivory: Ibid., 203.
recorded as being made of ebony: Ibid., 204.
Drawn by two horses: Ibid., 206.
“We are well informed”: Ibid.
“is a delivery record concerning”: Ibid., 207.
Woolens are sometimes described: Ibid., 218.
dyed in hues of purple and red: Ibid., 218–19.
One type, pharweha: Ibid., 219.
“Remarkable at Pylos”: Shelmerdine (2008), 118.
“Hundreds of drinking and eating vessels”: Ibid.
the production, transport, and delivery: Peter G. van Alfen, “The Linear B Inscribed Vases,” in Duhoux and Morpurgo Davies (2008), 238.
“The production of perfumes”: Bernabé and Luján (2008), 227.
the ointment-maker infused wine with spices: Ibid., 228–30.
cloth and perfumed oil were also traded overseas: Killen (2008), 184ff.
“Minoan society in Crete”: Chadwick (1976), 159.
This included suits of armor: Bernabé and Luján (2008), 213ff.
“Thus the watchers are guarding”: Chadwick (1976), 175.
Another lists eight hundred rowers: Ibid.
Similar conscription records: Shelmerdine (2008), 147.
“The Linear B documents concern”: Stefan Hiller, “Mycenaean Religion and Cult,” in Duhoux and Morpurgo Davies (2011), 170.
“striking proof of a high degree”: Hiller (2011), 205.
like Dionysus: Ibid., 183ff.
beginning with the word potnia: Ibid., 187ff.; García Ramón (2011), 235.
They include Posidaeia: Hiller (2011), 187.
twenty-two linen cloths: Ibid., 175.
manufactured items like gold vessels: Hiller (2011), 174.
“3 bulls are sent”: Ibid., 176–77.
“We know that from Homer onwards”: Ibid., 177–78.
from a mural in the Pylos palace: Shelmerdine (2008), 128.
“The book-keeping testifies”: Hiller (2011), 203.
“What actually happened”: Chadwick (1976), 177–78.