Riddle of the Labyrinth (Ebook)
The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code and the Uncovering of a Lost Civilisation
Buy from
The full story of the race to decipher the world's greatest puzzle, now in paperback.
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.
Riddle of the Labyrinth (Paperback)
The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code and the Uncovering of a Lost Civilisation
Buy from
The full story of the race to decipher the world's greatest puzzle, now in paperback.
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.
Reviews for Riddle of the Labyrinth
Sunday Times
Observer
Country Life
Lesley McDowell Sunday Herald
Ian Finlayson The Times
Praise for Talking Hands
'Fox provides an exhaustive, energetic and frequently elegant tour through the world of sign language and sign linguistics ... informed by the quiet passion of a natural teacher for her subject'
'
New York Times
Oliver Sacks
Margalit Fox
Related books

The Confidence Men
Margalit Fox
The astonishing true story of two First World War prisoners who pulled off one of the most ingenious escapes of all time.

Conan Doyle for the Defence
Margalit Fox
Arthur and George meets The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: how the creator of Sherlock Holmes overturned one of the great miscarriages of justice