MICHAEL VENTRIS’ decipherment of the Minoan-Mycenaen Linear B script, long a puzzle to scholars, ranks as one of the great achievements of modern archaeological and linguistic research. At the end of Ventris’ exciting adventure there was revealed one of the earliest of man’s written languages, a clue to the secrets of a civilization older than that of Homer, which left its traces in the impressive ruins of Greece and Crete and the clay tablets inscribed in “Linear B.”

JOHN CHADWICK, Lecturer in Classics at Cambridge University, and Ventries, collaborator in the quest, presents [sic] the background, course, and fruit of these important researches in terms intelligible to the general reader interested in archaeology, language, and the history of civilization. Mr. Chadwick gives an account of Ventries himself, of the brilliant logic with which he achieved the decipherment of Linear B, and of the import of the documents for the understanding of the ancient society whose records they are. His account is as exciting as the discovery itself.