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A short story
Linear A
- ‘The archaeologist may dig all day long, but it is the linguist who plumbs the deeper depths.’
Excerpt: When I got back to New York after my long-awaited and much-dreamed-about trip to Africa, I found that my girlfriend had moved out of my apartment and in with an older and, perhaps not coincidentally, wealthier guy and that our romance was over. Fair enough. We’d had our problems, and I did leave her alone for three months. Still, it hurt. . . .¶To combat this hurt, I developed a plan. I would return to my first love, my long-abandoned scholarly pursuits. My enthusiasm for the ancient world was already well established. I had studied classical Greek once upon a time and from that well-documented and sun-drenched world had been drawn toward the mistier, darker Mycenaean and Minoan landscapes, where mystery and controversy swirled in the background. I had closely followed all the debates and arguments over chronologies, origins and languages, almost to the point of feeling a part of them myself. I had even fantasized about deciphering Linear A, the intriguing script found on Minoan shards. . . .
About the writer: Mark McIntyre lives in New York City, where he is court manager for the Riverside Clay Tennis Association. He is working on a book about British explorers Richard Burton, Henry Bates and Alfred Wallace and how they happened to spend Christmas 1857 at separate locations on the equator.
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