Shorts

The Fire That SAVED the Oldest Greek We Can Read #Shorts

Nov 3, 2026

Pack: 50 - The Fire That SAVED the Oldest Greek We Can Read

TikTok · Watch on YouTube

Around 1200 BCE a palace at Pylos, in Greece, burned down, and the fire saved its paperwork. The story of the Linear B tablets, from the burning palace to the architect who read them, in museum photographs of the tablets and the palace site.

• The palace kept its accounts on unbaked clay: armour, rowers, bronze for smiths, rations for women workers. They were never meant to last beyond the year (Palaima, Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean, 2010).
• Linear B tablets survive only where fire baked them by accident. "No fire, no tablets" (Palaima, 2010).
• On April 4, 1939, the first day of digging at Pylos, Carl Blegen's team found the first Linear B tablets on the Greek mainland (University of Cincinnati).
• In 1952 the architect Michael Ventris showed the script was Greek, in its oldest known form, c. 1400–1200 BCE; John Chadwick helped prove it (Britannica).

Which of your records would you want to last that long? Tell us in the comments. Full story in our documentary, The Full History of Greece. Watch the full documentary: https://youtu.be/k3mrc7OCCNk

Sources

• T. G. Palaima, "Linear B", in The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean (2010)
• University of Cincinnati, Classics, History of Archaeology
• Britannica, Michael Ventris
• Britannica, Linear B

Images

• Linear B tablet from the palace at Pylos, 13th century BCE — Gary Todd — CC0 —
• Palace of Nestor, Pylos — Angela Stefanoni — CC BY 3.0 —
• Linear B tablet from the palace at Pylos — Gary Todd — CC0 —
• Linear B tablets from the palace at Pylos — Gary Todd — CC0 —
• Linear B tablet from the palace at Pylos — Gary Todd — CC0 —
• Mycenaean stirrup jar with a Linear B inscription, Eleusis — Furius — CC0 —

Apps by Shadowfetch iPhone and iPad apps from the studio, on the App Store.