Following the discoveries of Troy and Mycenae by Schliemann, in 1900 Sir Arthur Evans excavated the site of the palace of Knossos, the capital of ancient Crete, expecting to find another Mycenaean type city. Instead he found a much older and more advanced civilization which he termed Minoan after the legendary king of Greek myth. He also discovered two types of clay tablets which he termed Linear writing of class B and Linear writing of class A, the latter having been found at an archaeologically older level. The underlying language ofLinear B was deciphered by Michael Ventris and found to be...