Chronicle (1966)
The Decipherment of Linear B
1975 • E6 Nov 9, 1975 50m
For 50 years the strange, mysterious script discovered on baked clay tablets at Knossos in Crete remained undeciphered. Scholars and classicists were baffled. Then, in 1952, Michael Ventris, a young architect, cracked Linear B and electrified the archaeological world. René Cutforth tells the story of the decipherment and of its effect on a long-standing dispute between the grand old man of British archaeology, Sir Arthur Evans, and a young Englishman, Alan Wace, who claimed that Evans's theories about Greece 3,500 years ago were wrong - and who was made to suffer for his heresy. Re-aired 15 December 1977