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WonderLanguage fact

In 1952 Michael Ventris, a British architect working in his spare time, deciphered Linear B, the Bronze Age script of Crete and mainland Greece that had defeated scholars for half a century. He built on earlier work by the American scholar Alice Kober.

BBC radio talk, 1 July 1952

LanguageHistory

The story behind the card

Arthur Evans had found thousands of Linear B clay tablets at Knossos on Crete from 1900 onwards. Ventris first saw them at an exhibition in London in 1936, aged 14, and heard Evans speak. Kober had shown that words in the script changed their endings, as words do in Latin or Greek, and Ventris arranged the signs in grids to work out their sounds. Most experts assumed the language was not Greek, but his results showed it was an early form of Greek. He announced this in a BBC radio talk on 1 July 1952; John Chadwick, a Cambridge classicist and wartime code-breaker, heard it and joined him. The tablets proved to be palace records of sheep, oil, spices and chariot wheels. Ventris died in a car crash in 1956, aged 34.

Türkçe oku
İngiliz mimar Michael Ventris, boş zamanlarında uğraşarak 1952'de Linear B yazısını çözdü. Tunç Çağı'nda Girit'te ve Yunanistan anakarasında kullanılan bu yazı, yarım yüzyıldır uzmanlara direniyordu. Ventris, Amerikalı araştırmacı Alice Kober'ın daha önceki çalışmalarından yararlandı.
BBC radyo konuşması, 1 Temmuz 1952

Arthur Evans, 1900'den itibaren Girit'teki Knossos'ta Linear B ile yazılmış binlerce kil tablet bulmuştu. Ventris tabletleri ilk kez 1936'da, 14 yaşındayken Londra'daki bir sergide gördü ve Evans'ı dinledi. Kober, bu yazıdaki sözcüklerin sonlarının Latincede ya da Yunancada olduğu gibi değiştiğini göstermişti. Ventris de işaretleri tablolara yerleştirerek hangi sesleri karşıladıklarını buldu. Uzmanların çoğu dilin Yunanca olmadığını düşünüyordu, ama sonuçlar bunun Yunancanın erken bir biçimi olduğunu gösterdi. Ventris bunu 1 Temmuz 1952'de BBC radyosundaki bir konuşmada duyurdu. Konuşmayı dinleyen Cambridge'li klasik filolog ve savaş yıllarının şifre çözücüsü John Chadwick ona katıldı. Çözülen tabletler, sarayın koyun, zeytinyağı, baharat ve savaş arabası tekerleği kayıtlarıydı. Ventris 1956'da, 34 yaşında bir trafik kazasında öldü.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Michael Ventris
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