At the end of the 19th century, when Arthur Evans was the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, he became fascinated with a tiny carved agate gemstone. It was donated to the museum by a Reverend Greville John Chester, in 1886, who seems to have purchased it in a bazaar in Greece. The stone bore small enigmatic symbols, which Evans took to be evidence of early writing. On finding out the gemstone was originally from Crete, he headed to the island in search of more traces of this strange, unknown language.
