Alice Kober

Alice Kober (December 23, 1906 in New York City – May 16, 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 Myres. 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...