Pictographs and linear script symbols. The British archaeologist Arthur Evans (1851-1941) found thousands of clay tablets dating from the second millennium BC at Knossos, Crete, but denied other scholars access as he wished to translate them himself. In this table he compared hieroglyphic signs and 'Aegean Linear' and 'Cypriote and Semitic' scripts. Linear A has not yet been translated, but British scholar Michael Ventris (1922-1956) translated Linear B in the 1950s and found it was based on Greek, overturning Evans's view of Minoan history. Table from The Story of the Alphabet (Edward Clodd, 1900).