June 7, 1955
NESTOR’S PALACE: The American archaeologist Carl Blegen (Ed. note: 1887-1971) has been in Tryfyllia for the past week to continue work on the excavations at Ano and Kato Egliano, where the palace of Nestor and two royal graves have been discovered. Some time before the war, Mr Constantine Kourouniotis (1872-1945) claimed that there were traces of a Mycenaean city in the area around Pylos, in the prefecture of Messinia in the western Peloponnese. This view was shared by the internationally renowned American archaeologist, prompting the beginning of the exploration that resulted in the discovery, 14 years later, of Nestor’s palace. The war and the death of Kourouniotis brought a halt to the exploration, which resumed in 1953 under Carl Blegen with the cooperation of Professor Spyros Marinatos (1901-1974) and became a success. But the most important find is the discovery of over a thousand examples of Linear B script. Michael Ventris (1922-1956) has decoded 80 symbols and laid the foundations for the interpretation of Mycenaean script of the second period.
