In the 15 years since the decipherment of the so-called ‘Linear B’ script as Greek, I have often been asked what was the most important resulting gain in our knowledge of ancient Greece. I have always put first the final and conclusive proof that the Mycenaeans, the people who produced a brilliant civilization in Greece between the 16th and 12th centuries BC, were Greeks. Previously there had always been room for argument, and although most people accepted this as a fact, it was always just possible to assert that the Mycenaeans were a non-Greek people, whose deeds and legends had been appropriated by the Greeks as their own.