The Riddle of the Labyrinth

The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox Summary: In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece’s Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe’s earliest written records. For half a century, the meaning of the inscriptions, and even the language in which they were written, would remain a mystery.                                              Award-winning New York Times journalist Margalit Fox's riveting real-life intellectual detective story travels from the Bronze Age Aegean—the era of Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Helen—to the turn of the 20th century and the work of charismatic English archeologist Arthur Evans, to the colorful personal stories of the decipherers. These include Michael Ventris, the brilliant amateur who deciphered the script but met with a sudden, mysterious death that may have been a direct consequence of the decipherment; and Alice Kober, the unsung heroine of the story whose painstaking work allowed Ventris to crack the code. Angie's Comments: An interesting look into finding and deciphering Linear B, the writing found on Crete. Fox is especially interested in the work Alice Kober did, which eventually led to its decipherment by Michael Ventris. I enjoyed the discussion of how to decipher unknown writing from an unknown language. I can’t believe how much time people spent on Linear B, especially the lengths that Alice Kober went to. Recommended for readers of ancient history and/or code-breaking.  Request this item