
Linear B sign inventory
MONDAY JULY 22: 0627 Do I want to wake up now? No.
0910 The train gets crowded and stops at Denmark Hill for a long time. The driver announces that a passenger has fainted.
0940 UCL–there are signs to the Slade Summer School and EF. Great! I follow old people to the A V Hill Lecture Theatre.
1002 Antony Makrinos is the Zeus of the Summer School. There are 98 participants, some male and some female. UCL has a strict green policy, as well as catastrophically awful admin even by academic standards.
1035 Ester our lecturer goes to find someone who understands the IT. Everyone is very young, keen and bright.
Tiryns is Ester’s favourite Mycenaean site.

So that’s what a rhyton looks like (from Ayios Vassileios)
You can hear Michael Ventris talking on the BBC about his decipherment here.
1345 Should we have come back now (as in the programme) or at 1430 like she said? Best to practise our silent staring at blank screen skills for a bit.
1430 When she says she doesn’t expect us to learn the 91 syllabic signs immediately she means the opposite of course.
Exercise in reproducing the syllabic grid is just like management training where the trainer lets you get so far and then suggests it would be better if you organised yourselves rather than all doing the same thing. Except that this is interesting and important.
1530 I set off home without pausing for Disability in Antiquity. It is hot.

Ester addresses the troops over a completed Linear B exercise (in duplicate)
Tags: Ancient Greek, Greek, Homer, Linear B, summer schools
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