biography
| name: |
Ventris, Michael (George Francis)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1922–56)
|
| biography:
| Linguist, born in Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire, SE England, UK. As a teenager he heard Arthur Evans lecture on the undeciphered Minoan scripts found on tablets excavated at palace sites in Crete (Linear B), and determined to solve the puzzle. Although an architect by training, after World War 2 he devoted much of his time to analysis of the texts, and in 1952 announced that the language of Linear B was early Greek, a conclusion later confirmed by other scholars. He was killed in a road accident shortly before the publication of his joint work with John Chadwick (1920–98), Documents in Mycenaean Greek. |
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