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Faculty of Classics

 
linear b

The Mycenaean Epigraphy Group is dedicated to the study of Linear B, a script used in Bronze Age Crete and Greece (c.1400-1200 B.C.E.) to write an early form of Greek, known as ‘Mycenaean’. It also encompasses the study of other related scripts from Crete (Linear A and Cretan Hieroglyphic) and Cyprus (Cypro-Minoan and the Cypriot Syllabary), as well as of the societies that created and used these scripts.

Cambridge has a long tradition of Linear B scholarship, reaching back to Michael Ventris’ decipherment of the script in 1952 and its publication by Ventris and the Cambridge classicist John Chadwick in 1953. It holds the single most important Linear B reference collection and archives in the world, and remains a major research centre, as well as offering undergraduate and graduate courses studying Linear B.

The origins of the Mycenaean Epigraphy Group lie with John Chadwick. After the seminal research meeting at Gif-sur-Yvette in 1956 a wonderfully international spirit of communication was opened up among scholars working on the decipherment. This led to Mycenologists world-wide drawing together to form the Comité International Permanent des Études Mycéniennes (International Permanent Committee of Mycenaean Studies), under the auspices of UNESCO. One undertaking of the committee was that research centres should be set up in various different countries: these would hold literature and archives essential for working on Linear B and encourage scholarship on the material. Chadwick established the Mycenaean Epigraphy Group as the research centre for the United Kingdom.

The Mycenaean Epigraphy Room was founded in the 1960s in university offices in Laundress Lane, overlooking the Mill Pond. In those days the Faculty of Classics was located in a house in Silver Street, which housed a small administrative office, and buildings leased from Peterhouse in Little St Mary’s Lane. This building (which is now Peterhouse’s Library) housed a lecture theatre and the famous cast collection of the Museum of Classical Archaeology (commonly known as “the Ark”). When the Faculty moved to its present location, on the Sidgwick site, Mycenaean Epigraphy moved to a purpose-built room in the new building.

Many of the scholars now prominent in Mycenology throughout the world were trained at the Laundress Lane and Sidgwick sites, or have come as visiting scholars. Thanks to its unique collections, the Mycenaean Epigraphy Group remains a vibrant research centre and a leading hub for those working on Linear B and other related scripts.

Latest news

Joyce Reynolds Memoir

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"Joyce Reynolds, who spent most of her life as fellow of Newnham College Cambridge, was without doubt the leading British epigrapher of the 20th century, both as the publisher of new texts discovered in the course of modern archaeological exploration, and as the interpreter of such epigraphic texts to enhance and enrich...

The Kennedy Professorship of Latin

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Masters Student wins Roman Society MA dissertation prize

28 May 2025

The Faculty is delighted to announce that Naomi Norden (King’s College) has won joint first place in the Roman Society MA dissertation prize for her 2024 MPhil thesis 'Creating complexity: Paratextuality and Intertextuality in the Works of Ausonius'. Congratulations Naomi!

St John's College Newell Lecture

27 May 2025

This year the St John's College Newell Lecture was delivered by Jackie Murray on the topic of Race and Injustice in Plato's Republic. You can watch a recording of the event here: