Short answers, pulled from the story.
Philology is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It combines textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics, and is concerned with establishing the authenticity of texts, reconstructing their original form, and determining their meaning.
Classical philology originated at the Library of Pergamum and the Library of Alexandria around the fourth century BC. It was continued by ancient Greek and Roman scholars, survived through Arabic scholarship during the Middle Ages, and was revived in Europe during the Renaissance.
Jean-Francois Champollion deciphered and translated the Rosetta Stone in 1822. His work opened the broader effort to decode ancient writing systems of the Near East and Aegean.
Linear B was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick. They demonstrated that it recorded an early form of Greek, now known as Mycenaean Greek.
In English-speaking countries, philology became strongly associated with German scholarly practices. Anti-German sentiment following World War I led academic institutions to abandon the term, even as most continental European countries retained it in their departments and journals.
Traditional textual criticism reconstructs an author's original text by comparing variant manuscript copies and producing critical editions with editorial emendations. New philology rejects this approach, insisting on a strictly diplomatic rendering of texts exactly as they appear in each manuscript, without any editorial changes.