But as the Mycenaean and Minoan cultures were studied in more and more detail, it became clear that while superficially similar, there were also many differences. For a long time, scholars remained hopefully that the decipherment of the Mycenaeans’ system of writing – Linear B – would yield evidence of a kind of proto-Iliad. When Michael Ventris finally deciphered this syllabic script, it revealed only bureaucratic information, such as inventories. There was no proto-Iliad anywhere to be found, even though they did prove that the Mycenaeans spoke an early form of Greek and already worshipped most of the gods of the Olympic pantheon in the thirteenth century BC.