Results for Michael Ventris
On this page:
 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

Michael George Francis Ventris


(born July 12, 1922, Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire, Eng. — died Sept. 6, 1956, near Hatfield, Hertfordshire) British architect and cryptographer. At age 14 he heard a lecture on the continuing mystery of Linear B script (see Linear A and Linear B) and resolved to decipher it. In 1952 he determined that Linear B was Greek in its oldest known form, dating from c. 1400 – 1200 BC. He collaborated with John Chadwick (1920 – 98) on Documents in Mycenaean Greek (1956), published a few weeks after his own death in an auto accident.

For more information on Michael George Francis Ventris, visit Britannica.com.

 
 
Archaeology Dictionary: Michael Ventris

(1922–56) [Bi]

British scholar who, in 1952, deciphered the linear b script found in Mycenaean and Minoan contexts, showing that it was an early form of Greek. An architect by profession, he became interested in the problem of Linear B after hearing a lecture by Sir Arthur Evans. During WW2 he served as a navigator in the Royal Air Force, but after the war he resumed his spare-time study of ancient scripts, collaborating with John Chadwick in Oxford. In 1953 he published his conclusions in the Journal of Hellenic Studies and they were greeted with acclaim. He was made an OBE in 1955, received an honorary degree from the University of Uppsala, and was made an Honorary Research Associate of University College, London. Tragically, he was killed in a road accident in September 1956.

[Bio.: Dictionary of National Biography (1951–60), 1009–10]

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Ventris, Michael George Francis,
1922–56, English linguist. Ventris was a student of architecture, but he became interested in the untranslated Mycenaean scripts, particularly Linear B, which was found at Knossos, Pylos, and other sites. In 1952 he collaborated with John Chadwick in the decipherment and subsequent publication of Documents in Mycenaean Greek (1956). His theory, now generally accepted by scholars, indicates that Linear B was an archaic form of the Greek language. Ventris died at 34 as the result of an automobile accident.
 
Wikipedia: Michael Ventris

Michael George Francis Ventris (July 12, 1922September 6, 1956) was an English architect and classical scholar who, along with John Chadwick, was responsible for the decipherment of Linear B.

Ventris was educated in Switzerland and at Stowe School. (Stowe is an 18th century country house; by contrast, his mother, Dorothea (Dora) Ventris, lived in Berthold Lubetkin's Highpoint modernist apartments in Highgate). He could speak six European languages and read Latin and classical Greek. He enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1940 and graduated in 1948, after interrupting his training to serve as a navigator in the Royal Air Force. A few years after deciphering Linear B in 1951-1953, Ventris died in a car crash, aged 34.

Linear B

At the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans began excavating Knossos, an ancient city on the island of Crete. In doing so he uncovered a great many clay tablets inscribed with an unknown script. Some were older and were named Linear A. The bulk were of more recent vintage, and were dubbed Linear B. Evans spent the next several decades trying to decipher both, to no avail.

Part of the difficulty stemmed from Evans himself — he had strong opinions about the nature of Cretan civilization and was convinced that Linear B was a language he called "Minoan." A powerful political force in the academic world, he succeeded in cutting off any investigation into the possibility that the language on the tablets was Greek, despite some hints that this was the case.

Ventris' initial theory was that Etruscan and "Minoan" were related and that this might provide a key to decipherment. Although this proved incorrect, it was a link he continued to explore until the early 1950s.

Shortly after Evans died, Alice Kober noted that certain words in Linear B inscriptions had changing word endings — perhaps declensions in the manner of Latin or Greek. Using this clue, Ventris constructed a series of grids associating the symbols on the tablets with consonants and vowels. While which consonants and vowels they were remained mysterious, Ventris learned enough about the structure of the underlying language to begin guessing.

Some Linear B tablets had been discovered on the Greek mainland, and there was reason to believe that some of the chains of symbols he had encountered on the Cretan tablets were names. Noting that certain names appeared only in the Cretan texts, he made the inspired guess that those names applied to cities on the island. This proved to be correct. Armed with the symbols he could decipher from this, Ventris soon unlocked much text and determined that the underlying language of Linear B was in fact Greek. This overturned Evans' theories of Minoan history by establishing that Cretan civilization, at least in the later periods associated with the Linear B tablets, had been part of Mycenean Greece.

See also

Publications

  • Ventris, Michael and Chadwick, John (1956). Documents in Mycenaean Greek. Second edition (1974). Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-08558-6. 
  • Ventris, Michael (1988). Work notes on Minoan language research and other unedited papers. Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1988 Roma. 

Further reading

  • Hatzinikolaou Leonidas (2002). O thaumatourgos psithyros tou Ermi (The miraculous whisper of Hermes). Ellinika Grammata. ISBN 960-406-082-1.  Fiction on the untimely demise of M. Ventris during his effort to decipher Linear A as an Hellenic language

References

  • Chadwick, John (1958). The Decipherment of Linear B. Second edition (1990). Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-39830-4. 
  • Robinson, Andrew (2002). The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris. Thames & Hudson Ltd. ISBN 0-500-51077-6. 
  • Simon Tetlow, Ben Harris, David Roques and A. G. Meredith - Michael Ventris Remembered (Stowe School, 1984)

External links


 
 

Join the WikiAnswers Q&A community. Post a question or answer questions about "Michael Ventris" at WikiAnswers.

 

Copyrights:

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Archaeology Dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology. Copyright © 2002, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Michael Ventris" Read more

On this page:   E-mail   print Print  Link  

 

Keep Reading

Mentioned In: