[Interview] An interview with Stephen Bax

[Torsten]

You need then to tell Michael Ventris, who deciphered Linear B and identified it as Greek, that his methodology was wrong :-)

Dear Stephen,

 the deciphering of Linear B was not made by Ventris alone. The first step in deciphering was made by Alice Kober. She noticed that the words in Linear B have common roots and suffixes. This way she was able to determine that Linear B was a syllabic script. Moreover she identified patterns like three-word sets sharing similar suffixes. Ventris later named this patterns “Kober’s triplets”. This "Kober triples" were the key for deciphering Linear B since this way it was possible to identify signs sharing the same consonant. Ventris used this triplets to construct a series of grids associating the symbols on the tablets with consonants and vowels. In the end he was able to read 'ko-no-so' as his first word. This was possible since he was knowing that the signs for /ko/, /no/ and /so/ were related to each other and share the same vowel. [see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]

Sorry, but it is simply wrong to argue that your method has something in common with the way Linear B was deciphered. You are simply trying to identify some names. But you do so without even a basic understanding of the script. You didn't even try to understand any of the patterns known for the VMS. For instance the patterns described by Currier are very interesting. One pattern he describes is the line as a functional entity. Currier also noticed that some word-finals have an obvious and statistically-significant effect on the initial symbol of a following word. ...