Ventris Michael, Chadwick John. Documents in Mycenaean Greek. Three hundred selected tablets from Knossos, Pylos and Mycenae with commentary and vocabulary

With a Forword by Alan J. B. Wace. — Cambridge: at the University Press, 1959 (First printed 1956, Reprinted 1959). — xxxii + 452 p. — ISBN: 521 04599 1; 521 09596 4.During the months following the appearance of our first article “Evidence for Greek dialect in the Mycenean archives” (JHS, 73, 1953, pp. 84-103) we received several invitations to discuss the results of our decipherment at book length. Our first reaction was to regard the writing of such a book as premature, in view of the uncertainty and incompleteness of much of the interpretation; but since 1953 there have been a number of changes in the situation: 1. A large number of new Mycenaean tablets, found at Pylos and Mycenae in the seasons 1952-4, have been added to the known material and must now to be taken into account. […] 2. The 1952-4 tablets have enabled us to improve many of our earlier interpretations of signs, vocabulary and grammar, and have provided new and conclusive evidence that the language of the Mycenaean script really is a form of Greek. The documents here published are thus of great importance in forming almost the earliest record of Indo-European speech (of the family to which our own language belongs), and in providing the present-day speakers of Greek with a language history which may now be traced back more than 3350 years. Complete and detailed Mycenaean Vocabulary is becoming a necessity for comparative purposes. 3. A large number of classical scholars, philologists and archaeologists have begun to join in the interpretation of the documents. A general survey of the evidence will, we hope, be useful as a background against which to appreciate this new research discipline, already embodied in numerous articles dealing with points of detail. […].