Sir Arthur Evans and Linear B

British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans 'also discovered a number of parallels between the Cypriot script, which had been deciphered, and Linear B (newly discovered by his excavation at the Palace of Knossos in Crete). This indicated that the language represented by Linear B was an ancient form of Greek, but he wasn’t prepared to accept this, being convinced that Linear B was used to write Minoan, a language unrelated to Greek.
In 1939, a large number of clay tablets inscribed with Linear B writing were found at Pylos on the Greek mainland, much to the surprise of Evans, who thought Linear B was used only on Crete’ (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/linearb.htm).

With the hindsight that has been available after the deciphering of Linear B, now the puzzlement Evans faced can be explained as following: ‘Linear B was used between about 1500 and 1200 BC to write a form of Greek known as Mycenaean, named after Mycenae, where Agamemnon is said to have ruled’ (ibid). It is said that Mycenaean ‘adapted the Linear A alphabet to allow them to write down their own language, and that the language spoken in Crete at least by the rulers and their officials after 1450 BC was Greek, lending further credence to the theory that the island was conquered by the Mycenaeans’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A765146). In the meantime, Linear A was used by the previous rules of Crete, who built the palace of Knossos but ‘all attempts to decipher the Linear A texts have failed’ (ibid) because nobody knows the language in its spoken form. Sir Arthur Evans died in 1941 at the age of 90, before Linear B was deciphered. Evans ‘is constantly admired for his intuition, his creative imagination and his profound scholarship. It is to him that we owe the discovery of the marvellous Minoan Civilisation, which until his time was only dimly reflected in Greek Mythology’ (http://archpropplan.auckland.ac.nz/virtualtour/knossos/22more.htm).

Sir Arthur Evans

For reading the text in full: http://wrex2009.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/discovery-and-deciphiering-of-the-crete-inscriptions-liner-b/