They were in fact Minoan seal-stones, a fascinating example of the changing use and significance of objects over time.ĭeciphering the tablets presented a diabolical challenge: this was an unknown language presented in an unknown script. The tablets had been fired into hardness as the palace burned, the result of some unknown catastrophe – their survival was ensured by the abrupt destruction ofthe culture that had produced them. Evans had rightly suspected the existence of writing, Fox tells us, from the small stones, some decorated with lines and strokes, that he saw Cretan women wearing as charms to ensure plentiful breast milk. They were covered in writing, predating the Greek alphabet by 700 years. Not only did he find a complex of buildings larger than Buckingham Palace but over 1,000 clay tablets. She begins by rehearsing the story of Evans's expedition to Crete in 1900 he dug, on a spectacularly good hunch, at Knossos (his supplies included a gross of nail brushes, two dozen tins of ox tongue, 12 plum puddings, and a union flag). Such daily dealings with extraordinary lives is clearly an excellent training ground: like the author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Fox knows how to tell a pacy tale.

Kate Summerscale had a similar job on the Telegraph before turning to books full-time. Alice Kober was the unassuming, overworked and ferociously clever Brooklyn classicist whose life was cut short in 1950 at the age of 43 as she came frustratingly close to unlocking the secrets of the Minoan script.įox is an obituarist at the New York Times. They are Arthur Evans, the British archaeologist who, in 1900, discovered tablets covered with the mysterious ancient writing at Knossos on Crete Michael Ventris, the architect and inspired linguist who, having set himself the task of solving the riddle as a teenager spectacularly did so in 1952, only for his mental state to crumble and a third, whose story has been, until now, scarcely known. Margalit Fox's deft, sharply written account of the cracking of Linear B (the earliest Greek script) has a trio of flawed heroes.

Margalit fox riddle of the labyrinth