Michael Ventris , born the July 12th 1922, dead the September 6th 1956, Architect and British philologist, scanner of the Linear B, a system of writing of the Greek antiquated employee by the Civilization mycénienne.

Biography

Raised in Switzerland, Michael Ventris shows in her young age a great talent for the languages. He thus speaks the French, the Suisse German, the Polish and three other European languages, and controls the Latin and the old Greek. At the school, it attends a conference given by sir Arthur Evans, archeologist and inventor of the palate of Cnossos, in Crete. The remarks made by this last on linear B, not yet deciphered, impassion Ventris, which is put at work. It leaves with the idea, which will appear false, that the linear B, which Evans also calls the “Minoan” (cf Minoan Civilization), is an Etruscan form of . In parallel, in 1940, it enters to Architectural School Association off Architecture, the oldest school of architecture independent of Great Britain. It leaves there graduate in 1948.

In 1950, it prepares a questionnaire about the linear B, which it sends to the large philologists of the time. It uses the answers to continue its own research. It rests on:

• work of John Simpleton, which determines the full number of signs composing linear B - thus suggesting a Syllabaire rather than a Alphabet;
• those of Alice Kober, which notices that certain words seem to change termination, suggesting variation S comparable with those of the Greek.

He can then draw up grids associating the signs of linear B with consonants and vowels. By comparing shelves discovered on the Greek continent and of the shelves crétoises, Ventris determines that certain symbol strings are in fact of the proper names. In June 1952, it manages to bore the secrecy of the linear b: it is acted in fact of an antiquated form of Greek.

July 1st, it gives a communication on this subject to BBC. Immediately, he knows the celebrity. He continues his work in collaboration with John Chadwick with which he publishes in 1955 Documents in Mycenæan Greek (“Documents in Greek mycénien”), first corpus of deciphered shelves, which calls into question the assumptions of Arthur Evans on antiquated Crete and makes it possible to put in perspective correctly the period mycénienne in the history of the Aegean world.

Michael Ventris dies in an car accident one year after this publication.

Publications

• The Decipherment off Linear B , Cambridge University Near, 1990 (2nd edition).
• with Michael Ventris, Documents in Mycenæan Greek , Cambridge University Near, 1974 (2nd edition).