MAY 1992

For the second edition of this book in 1967 I wrote a short Postscript bringing the story of the decipherment up to date. Now twenty-four years later I have another chance to revise what I wrote then. I shall only attempt to mention a few of the more important developments since the early days of the decipherment.

At the time this book was first published, several attacks on the decipherment had already appeared, and others followed. The critics were in due course answered by the supporters of the decipherment, and this debate had the good effect of clearing up some of the obscurities in the history of the decipherment. For instance, it was suggested that Ventris did not learn of the ‘tripod’ tablet as described above (p. 81), but had already based the decipherment on the words it contains. This calumny was easily refuted by Professor Biegen, for the fragments making up this tablet only came out of the ground in the very weeks when Ventris was writing Work Note 20, and were then unreadable until they had been treated and cleaned; so that even if Ventris had been present at the dig, he could not have obtained the text. The astounding suggestion was then made that Ventris had earlier, by some unspecified means, obtained another tablet with similar contents, which he used and then destroyed; such speculations have done nothing but discredit the authors.