Alice Kober

Alice Kober (1906 – 1950) was an American classical scholar and archaeologist best known for laying the groundwork for the decipherment of Linear B.

Starting in the early 1940s, Kober conducted her studies of Linear B while an assistant to Sir John Myers. At the time, it was agreed that the writing direction of Linear B was from left to right. Most of the known clay tablets were inventory data which contributed to the early decipherment of the counting system. The number of distinct characters that had been identified – 90 – indicated a syllabary writing system. Arthur Evans also suggested that the language used inflection. While some scholars suspected it might be related to Greek or a Cypriot language, most assumed Linear B was an unknown Cretan language.

Since World War II rationing had made paper rare, Kober cut her 2" x 3" (5 x 7 cm) note cards from any paper she could find, including flyers, books, and envelopes. She filled over 186,000 note cards with information about occurrences of the 90 Linear B characters.

Kober found patterns in the writing: she identified word stems and endings which she presumed indicated the grammatical case. She also labelled some characters consonants and others vowels.

Kober died of cancer at the age of 43, two years before the decipherment of Linear B was announced.

External links

* [http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/publications/editorials/27oct03.html Archives revive interest in forgotten life]