Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon, professor of Near Eastern Studies at Brandeis University, has deciphered a system of writing used on tablets on the Mediterranean island of Crete, about 3,600 years ago, tracing the relationship of the ancient script to an early Semitic language.
The language on the tablets has been a mystery to scientists for many years. Now Dr. Gordon has announced that his decoding of the pictographs and syllabic signs on the Cretan tablets shows the language used was Akkadian, a tongue tracing back to ancient Babylon.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.