The Riddle of the Labyrinth (56 page)

252
The character
,
for instance
: Ibid., 128.
known officially by the unromantic name P641
: This drawing of the “tripod tablet,” made by Ventris, was first published in his article “King Nestor's Four-Handled Cups: Greek Inventories in the Minoan Script,”
Archaeology
7:1 (Spring 1954), 18.

254
“tripod cauldron(s) of Cretan workmanship”
: Robinson (2002b), 119.
“Is coincidence excluded?”
: Quoted in Chadwick (1958), 81.
the “great state of excitement”
: Ibid.
“Looks hard to beat!”
: Robinson (2002b), 121.

255
On seeing it, the audience
: Chadwick (1958), 88.
It “went off all right”
: Ibid.
He spoke before the king of Sweden
: Robinson (2002b), 131.
He spoke at Oxford
: Ibid., 117.
He spoke at Cambridge
: Ibid.
the
Times
of London carried an account
:
Times
, June 25, 1953, 1.
“the Everest of Greek archaeology”
: Robinson (2002b), 122.
“Whichever is regarded as the greatest”
: Pope (1975), 9.

256
“the label ‘Minoan' had been out of date”
: Chadwick (1958), 73.
“Offers to join the academic world”
: Robinson (2002b), 137.
his mere three years of schoolboy Greek
: Thomas G. Palaima, personal communication.

257
“After the
Times
article”
: Robinson (202b), 126.
“By 1956, after fourteen years”
: Ibid., 148–49.

258
In July 1955
: Ibid., 140.
“I shan't be able to devote”
: Ibid., 141.
“Information for the Architect”
: Ibid., 142.

259
“There were almost no books”
: Ibid.
“One might ring up”
: Quoted in Ibid., 145–46.

260
“that he himself saw no future”
: Ibid., 147.
“was aware,” Robinson writes
: Ibid., 148.
an “extraordinary, shocking, abject, private letter”
: Ibid., 149.
“I have had a couple of weeks”
: Quoted in Ibid., 149–50.

261
Very late at night
: Ibid., 151.
He apparently told his family
:
A Very English Genius
(2002).
He collided with a parked truck and was killed instantly
: Coroner's inquisition, Hertford district of Hertfordshire, Sept. 11, 1956, MV Papers, PASP.

262
At the coroner's inquest
: Ibid.; Robinson (2002b), 151.
“I don't think he committed suicide”
:
A Very English Genius
(2002).

263
“series of fundamental articles”
: Michael Ventris, “The Decipherment of the Mycenaean Script,”
Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Classical Studies
(Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1958), 72.

264
“was probably too restrained”
: Robinson (2002b), 72.
“had no results”
: AEK to JLM, Sept. 18, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.
“Every one of Kober's inferences”
: Pope (1975), 162.

265
“alternative name-endings”
: MV to AEK, Good Friday [March 26], 1948, MV Papers, PASP.

266
In the margin of his letter
: WTMF to AEK, May 1, 1947, AEK Papers, PASP.

267
a phonetic grid containing more than twenty Linear B characters
: Thomas G. Palaima, “Scribes, Scribal Hands and Palaeography,” in Yves Duhoux and Anna Morpurgo Davies, eds.,
A Companion to Linear B: Mycenaean Texts and Their World
, vol. 2 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 2011), 51, note 29.

EPILOGUE: MR. X AND MR. Y

269
“we may only find out”
: Kober, untitled lecture (June 15, 1946), 16.
“As for what the humanities”
: Robinson (2002b), 157.

270
“The Criminal Courts can only tell us”
: Murray Kempton, “When Constabulary Duty's to Be Done,”
New York Newsday
(May 11, 1990).
“the movement of goods”
: Cynthia W. Shelmerdine, “Mycenaean Society,” in Yves Duhoux and Anna Morpurgo Davies, eds.,
A Companion to Linear B: Mycenaean Texts and Their World
, vol. 1 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 2008), 115.

271
“Almost all parts of Greece”
: J. L. García Ramón, “Mycenaean Onomastics,” in Duhoux and Morpurgo Davies (2011), 242.
their combined population
: Shelmerdine (2008), 136.
about forty Linear B tablets were uncovered
: Robinson (2002b), 117–18.
as recently as 2010
: John Noble Wilford, “Greek Tablet May Shed Light on Early Bureaucratic Practices,”
New York Times
, April 5, 2011, D3.

272
Scholars have conjectured
: Palaima (2011), 116ff.
“Mycenaean state bureaucracy”
: Shelmerdine (2008), 127.
“His status,” Shelmerdine explains
: Ibid., 128.

273
As Shelmerdine points out
: Ibid., 128–29.
rowers, as well as smallholders
: Ibid., 130.
hekwetai
: Ibid., 131.
“collectors”
: Ibid., 132.
the scribes themselves
: Palaima, “Scribes, Scribal Hands and Palaeography,” in Duhoux and Morpurgo Davies (2011), 121ff.
At the regional level
: Shelmerdine (2008), 133–34.

274
records the acquisition of a slave
: Yves Duhoux, “Mycenaean Anthology,” in Duhoux and Morpurgo Davies (2008), 252.
rations of grain (wheat or barley), figs, and bedding
: See, e.g., Shelmerdine (2008), 122, 138, 147.
“The tablets reinforce the view”
: Ibid., 138.

275
“Slave status is suggested”
: Ibid., 139.
one such group is described as “captives”
: Ibid.
“are identified by
[
non-Greek
]
ethnic adjectives”
: Ibid.
“Gladly Welcome”
: García Ramón (2011), 220ff.

276
while “highly expressive”
: Ibid., 226.
“Goat-Head”
: Ibid., 226–27.
the premonetary society of Mycenae
: See, e.g., Shelmerdine (2008), 145.
A group of eight hundred tablets from Knossos
: Chadwick (1976) 127.
the names of individual oxen
: García Ramón (2011), 229; Chadwick (1958), 119.
At Knossos, an office in the east wing
: Shelmerdine (2008), 127.

277
“The most extraordinary figure for wheat”
: Chadwick (1976), 117–18.
“The absence of any record of the grain harvest”
: Ibid., 118.
The central palaces exacted payment
: See, e.g., Shelmerdine (2008), 145ff.; J. T. Killen, “Mycenaean Economy,” in Duhoux and Morpurgo Davies (2008), 189–90.

278
members of certain professions, including bronzesmiths
: Shelmerdine (2008), 146.
Four metals are mentioned
: Bernabé and Luján (2008), 227.
“used for a variety of purposes”
: Ibid.
the heads of spears and javelins
: Ibid., 216.
Such spearheads, the two scholars point out
: Ibid.
the nine-legged tables
: Ibid., 202.
often inlaid with ivory
: Ibid., 203.

279
recorded as being made of ebony
: Ibid., 204.
Drawn by two horses
: Ibid., 206.
“We are well informed”
: Ibid.
“is a delivery record concerning”
: Ibid., 207.
Woolens are sometimes described
: Ibid., 218.
dyed in hues of purple and red
: Ibid., 218–19.

280
One type, pharweha
: Ibid., 219.
“Remarkable at Pylos”
: Shelmerdine (2008), 118.
“Hundreds of drinking and eating vessels”
: Ibid.
the production, transport, and delivery
: Peter G. van Alfen, “The Linear B Inscribed Vases,” in Duhoux and Morpurgo Davies (2008), 238.
“The production of perfumes”
: Bernabé and Luján (2008), 227.

281
the ointment-maker infused wine with spices
: Ibid., 228–30.
cloth and perfumed oil were also traded overseas
: Killen (2008), 184ff.
“Minoan society in Crete”
: Chadwick (1976), 159.
This included suits of armor
: Bernabé and Luján (2008), 213ff.

282
“Thus the watchers are guarding”
: Chadwick (1976), 175.
Another lists eight hundred rowers
: Ibid.
Similar conscription records
: Shelmerdine (2008), 147.
“The Linear B documents concern”
: Stefan Hiller, “Mycenaean Religion and Cult,” in Duhoux and Morpurgo Davies (2011), 170.
“striking proof of a high degree”
: Hiller (2011), 205.
like Dionysus
: Ibid., 183ff.

283
beginning with the word
potnia: Ibid., 187ff.; García Ramón (2011), 235.
They include Posidaeia
: Hiller (2011), 187.
twenty-two linen cloths
: Ibid., 175.
manufactured items like gold vessels
: Hiller (2011), 174.

      
“3 bulls are sent”
: Ibid., 176–77.
“We know that from Homer onwards”
: Ibid., 177–78.

284
from a mural in the Pylos palace
: Shelmerdine (2008), 128.
“The book-keeping testifies”
: Hiller (2011), 203.
“What actually happened”
: Chadwick (1976), 177–78.

The Riddle of the Labyrinth
would not exist without the energy and generosity of Thomas G. Palaima of the University of Texas. One of the world's foremost experts on Mycenaean Greece (his work earned him a MacArthur Fellowship in 1985), he has been more instrumental than anyone else in bringing Alice Kober's role in the decipherment of Linear B to light. The archives of the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory (www.utexas.edu/research/pasp)—the repository Tom established at Texas and continues to superintend—have furnished a much-needed home for Kober's papers, as well as housing the papers of Tom's mentor, Emmett L. Bennett Jr., and material pertaining to Michael Ventris.

It was Tom who first put me on to Alice. Several years ago, thinking I wanted to write a book about Linear B (and thinking, as everyone did then, that the story belonged exclusively to Ventris), I cold-called him at his office. It was enough of a boon that Tom invited me, sight unseen, to come to Austin and troll through the archives. But the most valuable gift he gave me—for by divine providence, the cataloguing of Kober's papers had been completed shortly before I called—was to make me understand that the real reason to visit, and the real reason to write a book on the decipherment, was to bring the work of this fascinating, vital, yet too-long-overlooked woman into public view at last.

Others at the University of Texas have also been supremely helpful, among them Christy Costlow Moilanen, who created the meticulous finding aids to the Kober papers; the delightful Beth Chichester, whose digital photography skill transformed images from the archive into publishable shape; Matthew Ervin; Brandi Buckler; Dygo Tosa; and Zachary Fischer. My friend Kathleen McElroy, who despite the valiant efforts of the entire newsroom to restrain her, left a high-level editing job at the
New York Times
to get a Ph.D. at U. Texas, provided aid and comfort to a weary traveler in Austin.

Although we have never met, I also owe a debt to the Scottish writer Alison Fell. In the course of researching her 2012 novel,
The Element -inth in Greek
(Sandstone Press), in which Alice Kober appears as a character, she scoured the United States for papers relating to the Kober family—birth and death certificates, ships' manifests, photographs, and the like—with which she generously seeded the archives at U. Texas. Kober's cousin Patricia Graf also graciously spent time on the phone with me, answering my questions about “Aunt Alice” and the Kober family.

I am indebted, as always, to Mark Aronoff of Stony Brook University, my longtime adviser on matters linguistic; and to Paul McBreen, my tireless, ever-patient Greek tutor. Thomas Holton kindly gave permission to use a photograph of a Rongorongo tablet taken by his late father, George Holton.

Alexander Piperski generously consented to the reproduction in these pages of his marvelous Blissymbolics puzzle, created for the 2010 International Linguistics Olympiad. Tyler Akins not only was kind enough to let us use the Dancing Men font he designed but also was gracious enough to help create a high-resolution version specifically for publication in this book.

In Britain, thanks are due to Olga Krzyszkowska and Mike Edwards of the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of London; Hannah Kendall and Amy Taylor of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford; and the filmmaker Martin Pickles, who has long been interested in the Linear B story. Michael Ventris's biographer, Andrew Robinson, has been unstintingly generous in sharing information with me. (Though I would have dearly loved to have spoken with Ventris's daughter, Tessa, for this book, she did not respond to requests for interviews.)

Mark Aronoff, Tom Palaima, and Andrew Robinson all read the manuscript and made invaluable suggestions and corrections.