1851-1941

British Archaeologist

Sir Arthur John Evans uncovered the ruins of the ancient city of Knossos in Crete, and with it a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization he named "Minoan." Evans also found thousands of tablets bearing Minoan scripts called Linear A and Linear B. When the Linear B script was deciphered, the language it recorded was shown to be an early form of Greek. The discoveries in Crete cast light upon a period of Aegean civilization previously known mainly by its dim reflections in the mythology of classical Greece.

Arthur Evans was born on July 3, 1851, in Nash Mills, Hertfordshire, England. He was educated at Harrow School, Brasenose College at Oxford University, and the University of Göttingen. After graduating, Evans traveled to Bosnia with his brother Lewis, and was witness to a peasant uprising against Ottoman rule. Later he worked as a...