Purchase
THE RIDDLE OF THE LABYRINTH
By: Margalit Fox
The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
Ecco
May 2013
On Sale: May 14, 2013
400 pages
ISBN: 0062228838
EAN: 9780062228833
Kindle: B009NQZPCU
Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative.
When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greeceβs Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europeβs earliest written records. For half a century, the meaning of the inscriptions, and even the language in which they were written, would remain a mystery.
Award-winning New York Times journalist Margalit Fox's riveting real-life intellectual detective story travels from the Bronze Age Aegeanβthe era of Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Helenβto the turn of the 20th century and the work of charismatic English archeologist Arthur Evans, to the colorful personal stories of the decipherers. These include Michael Ventris, the brilliant amateur who deciphered the script but met with a sudden, mysterious death that may have been a direct consequence of the deipherment; and Alice Kober, the unsung heroine of the story whose painstaking work allowed Ventris to crack the code.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - June 30, 2013
Morning Edition - June 21, 2013
| 
© 2003-2026