McClanahan Lecture Series
Cracking a Late Bronze Age Code:
Linear B and its Decipherment
Dr. Dimitri Nakassis, University of Colorado Boulder
Thursday, April 15th, 2021听 |听 7:00 p.m.听 |听 Virtual Webinar
Michael Ventris and the Pylos Tablet An 35
The decipherment of Linear B in 1952 by Michael Ventris is one of the great intellectual achievements of the 20th century, for Ventris cracked this Late Bronze Age code without the Aegean equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. The demonstration that Linear B was used to write Greek ca. 1400-1200 BCE, half a millennium before Homer, inaugurated a new chapter in the history of the Greek language and revolutionized the study of Late Bronze Age Greece. This lecture will review how the decipherment happened and what insights Linear B continues to provide to scholars of early Greece, almost 70 years after Ventris鈥� magnificent discovery.听
This lecture is free and will be hosted on Zoom.
This lecture is sponsored by Mary E.V. McClanahan.听 抖阴旅行射 Classics is grateful for her generous support.