The Minoan Cipher

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In memory of my pal Wayne Valero, collector extraordinaire, writer and friend of writers, a natural-born editor, lover of adventure and all-round good guy, who left this world far too soon.

The internet has made a universe of information available at the touch of a keyboard, but it is in physical books that an author searches for nuggets to stir the imagination of the reader. The Santorini eruption used as a backdrop in the Prologue is exhaustively examined in “Fire in the Sea” by Walter L. Friedrich. Two books, “Minoans” and “The Knossos Labyrinth,” both by Rodney Castleden, provided fascinating insights into work of Sir Arthur Evans and the art, architecture and mysterious religion of the long-lost civilization he discovered. The remarkable accomplishments of the linguistic genius Michael Ventris are described in “The Man Who Deciphered Linear B” by Andrew Robinson and “The Decipherment of Linear B” by John Chadwick. Ventris actually died in an auto accident at the age of thirty-four. While the fanciful account of that tragic event in “The Minoan Cipher” is purely speculative, if any one could have translated Linear A, it would have been Michael Ventris.

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