The Decipherment of Linear A : Crete, Egypt and the End of the Minoan Empire

Linear A is a Middle and Late Bronze Age script principally used on Crete.Dated to 1800 - 1450 BC, it was discovered by archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans in 1900 and for over 120 years it has - until now - defied decipherment. In his book, author Mark Cook, a forensic accountant, demonstrates how he deciphered Linear A.His work describes how he first approached decipherment by setting aside commonly held misconceptions.Previous decipherment attempts typically incorrectly assumed the underlying language was an unknown Minoan language (Crete being the heart of the Minoan Empire), or misconstrued its relationship with Linear B (the earliest written form of Greek, which replaced it). Linear A is found mainly on clay tablets recording ephemeral accounting information, and Mark Cook tackled the decipherment as an accountant, focussing on the numbers, noting the mathematical relationships between the items recorded (which relationships were evident in the later Linear B script where the same thi