Alice E. Kober Papers
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://hdl.handle.net/2152/15875
Alice E. Kober (1906-1950) was a Classical scholar and academician whose fastidiously detailed and documented life’s work contributed to the decipherment of Linear B. Until just days before her death from cancer at the age of 43, she employed a unique heuristic approach that proved conclusively the Mycenaean script (circa 1500-1100 BC) is inflected. Her findings and methods were subsumed by Michael Ventris (1922-1956) who in 1952 successfully deciphered Linear B as a syllabic language of archaic Greek etymology. Research material, publications, manuscripts, lectures, correspondence, and professional material are included in the approximately 188,825 items that comprise the Alice E. Kober Papers (1932-1950) of the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory. The bulk of the items support the decipherment of Linear B while correspondence, lectures, and professional material add context to the research material.