Riddle of the Labyrinth (eBook)

The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code and the Uncovering of a Lost Civilisation

Fox Margalit Fox (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2013
273 Seiten
ProFile (Verlag)
978-1-84765-970-5 (ISBN)

Infos

The decoding of Linear B is one of the world's greatest stories: from the discovery of a cache of ancient tablets recording a lost prehistoric language to the dramatic solution of the riddle nearly seventy years later, it exerts a mesmerising pull on the imagination. But this captivating story is missing a crucial piece. Two men have dominated Linear B in popular history: Arthur Evans, the intrepid Victorian archaeologist who unearthed Linear B at Knossos and Michael Ventris, the dashing young amateur who produced a solution. But there was a third figure: Alice Kober, without whose painstaking work, recorded on pieces of paper clipped from hymn-sheets and magazines and stored in cigarette boxes in her Brooklyn loft, Linear B might still remain a mystery. Drawing on Kober's own papers - only made available recently - Margalit Fox provides the final piece of the enigma, and along the way reveals how you decipher a language when you know neither its grammar nor its alphabet as well as the stories behind other ancient languages, like the dancing-man Rongorongo of Easter Island.

Rezensionen

A nail-biting intellectual and cultural adventure

The author's triumph lies in her presentation of this complex subject, narrated with the pace and excitement of a detective story

[Fox's] enthusiasm is compelling when talking about the raw inventive brainpower of the code-breakers, their unswerving passion, and the magical way that a set of lines and curves in clay can be transformed into something with meaning

A captivating and important book, minutely researched and vividly narrated

An engrossing detective story of driven personalities, hidden clues, perseverance and intuition [Fox] has uncovered a remarkable woman who had been buried by history

Truly memerising. It's also a lovely testament to language and the history of linguistics

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 11.7.2013
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Altertum / Antike
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Hilfswissenschaften ► Paläografie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
• ISBN-10: 1-84765-970-5 / 1847659705
• ISBN-13: 978-1-84765-970-5 / 9781847659705