Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:20, 17 March 2006

There are a large number of claims of decipherment of the Phaistos Disc

The claims may be categorized into linguistic decipherments, identifying the language of the inscription, and non-linguistic decipherments. A purely ideographical reading is not linguistic in the strict sense: while it may reveal the meaning of the inscription, it would not allow us to identify the underlying language.

A large part of the claims are clearly pseudoscientific, if not bordering on the esoteric. Linguists, but not mathematicians (cf Cl.Shannon's work), are doubtful if the inscription is sufficiently long in order to unambiguously recognize the correct solution even if it was among the proposals. Mainstream consensus tends towards the assumption of a syllabic script, possibly mixed with ideogram, like the known scripts of the epoch (Egyptian hieroglyphs, Luwian hieroglyphs, Linear B).

Some approaches attempt to establish a connection with known scripts, either the roughly contemporary Cretan hieroglyphs or Linear A native to Crete, or Egyptian or Luwian hieroglyphics. Solutions postulating an independent Aegean script have also been proposed. They are based upon the fact that the similarities of the disk's script with any known script are unsignificant, although the glyphs belong to Aegean Cultures, and that all the deciphering attempts based upon a similarity with a known scripts have been obliged to accept farfetched connections.

Linguistic

Greek

• George Hempl, 1911 (interpretation as Ionic Greek, syllabic writing)
  • A-side first; reading inwards; A-side begins Template:Polytonic...
• Florence Stawell, 1911 (interpretation as Homeric Greek, syllabic writing);
  • B-side first; reading inward: A-side begins Template:Polytonic·....
  • Not Ionic; B30 is non-sigmatic Template:Polytonic; B6 is Template:Polytonic, with four long alphas.
• Steven R. Fischer, 1988 (interpretation as a Greek dialect, syllabic writing);
  • A-side first; reading inwards;
• Derk Ohlenroth, 1996 (interpretation as a Greek dialect, alphabetic writing);
  • A-side first; reading outwards; numerous homophonic signs
• Keven & Keith Massey, 2003 (interpretation as a Greek dialect, syllabic writing );
  • A-side first; reading outwards;
• Benjamin Schwarz, 1959 (interpretation as Mycenean Greek, syllabic writing)
  • A-side first; reading inwards.
  • comparison with Linear B as starting point.
• Adam Martin, 2000 (interpretation as a Greek-Minoan bilingual text, alphabetic writing)
  • reading outwards;
  • reads only Side A as Greek and says Side B is Minoan

"Proto-Ionic"

Jean Faucounau, 1975 considers the script as the original invention of a Cycladic and maritime Aegean people, the proto-Ionians, who had picked up the idea of a syllabic acrophonic script from Egypt at the time of the VIth Dynasty. He interprets the text as "proto-Ionic" Greek in syllabic writing )

Reading A-side first, inwards, he deciphers a (funerary) hymn to one Arion, child of Argos, destroyer of Iasos. The language is a Greek dialect, written with considerable phonological ambiguities, comparable to the writing of Mycenean Greek in Linear B, hand-crafted by Faucounau to suit his reading, among other things postulating change of digamma to y and loss of labiovelars, but retention of Indo-European -sy- (in the genitive singular -osyo, Homeric -oio). Faucounau has gathered evidence, which he asserts shows the existence of proto-Ionians as early as the Early Bronze Age and of a proto-Ionic language with the required characteristics during the Late Bronze Age. He has presented this evidence in several papers and sumarized it in his two books, of 1999 and 2001.

The text begins

ka-s (a)r-ko-syo / pa-yi-s / a-ri-o / a-a-mo / ka-s læ-yi-to / te-ri-o-s / te-tmæ-næ

kas Argoio payis Arion ahamos. kas læi(s)ton dærios tetmænai

"Arion, the son of Argos, is without equal. He is the one who distribute the spoil of battle."

Faucounau's solution was critically reviewed by Duhoux (2000), who in particular was sceptical about the consonantal sign s (D12) in the otherwise syllabic script, which appears word-finally in the sentence particle kas, but not in nominatives like ahamos. But it is to be noticed that such apparent incoherences do exist also in the IVth Century BC inscription written with the Cypriot syllabary.

Luwian

Achterberg et al., 2004 interpreted the text as hieroglyphic Luwian) reading inwards, A-side first. The research group proposes a 14th century date, based on a dating of PH 1, the associated Linear A tablet. The resulting text is a Luwian document of land ownership, addressed to one na-sa-tu ("Nestor"; Dative na-sa-ti) of hi-ya-wa (Ahhiyawa). Toponyms read are pa-ya-tu (Phaistos), ra-su-ta (Lasithi), mi-SARU (Mesara), ku-na-sa (Knossos), sa₃-har-wa (Scheria), ri-ti-na (Rhytion). Another personal name read is i-du-ma-na ("Idomeneus"), governor of Mesara.

The strokes are read as a 46th glyph, expressing word-final ti. The text begins

a-tu mi₁-SARU sa+ti / pa-ya-tu / u na-sa₂-ti / u u-ri / a-tu hi-ya-wa

"In Mesara is Phaistos. To Nasatu ("Nestor"), great in Ahhiyawa."

Hittite

• Vladimir Georgiev, 1976 (interpretation as Hittite language, syllabic writing);
  • A-side first; reading outwards;

Egyptian

• Albert Cuny, 1914 (interpretation as an ancient Egyptian document, syllabic-ideographic writing);

Semitic

• Kjell Aartun, 1992 (interpretation as a Semitic language, syllabic writing);
  • A-side first; reading outwards;

Other

• Sergei V. Rjabchikov 1998 (interpretation as a Slavonic dialect, syllabic writing );
  • A-side first; reading outwards;
• Marco Corsini, 2003 (interpretation as a Greco-Creto-Egyptian document )
  • A-side first; reading outwards;

Ideographic

• Paolo Ballotta, 1974 (interpretation as ideographic writing);
• Harald Haarmann, 1990 (interpretation as ideographic writing);
• Axel Hausmann, 2002 (document from Atlantis, dated to 4400 BC, ideographic reading)

Non-linguistic

• Leon Pomerance, 1976 (interpretation as astronomical document);
• Peter Aleff, 1982 (interpretation as ancient gameboard);
• Ole Hagen, 1988 (interpretation as calendar)
• Hermann Wenzel, 1998 (astronomical interpretation)
• Friedhelm Will, 2000 (interpretation as number-philosophically-document of "atlantean" origin);
• Rosario Vieni, 2005 (interpretation as a calendar )

References

• Aartun, Kjell, 'Der Diskos von Phaistos; Die beschriftete Bronzeaxt; Die Inschrift der Taragona-tafel' in Die minoische Schrift : Sprache und Texte vol. 1, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz (1992) ISBN 3-447-03273-1
• Achterberg, Winfried; Best, Jan; Enzler, Kees; Rietveld, Lia; Woudhuizen, Fred, The Phaistos Disc: A Luwian Letter to Nestor, Publications of the Henry Frankfort Foundation vol XIII , Dutch Archeological and Historical Society, Amsterdam 2004
• Balistier, Thomas, The Phaistos Disc - an account of its unsolved mystery, Verlag Thomas Balistier, 2000 (as above); describes Aarten's and Ohlenroth's decipherments.
• Faucounau, Jean, Le déchiffrement du Disque de Phaistos & Les Proto-Ioniens : histoire d'un peuple oublié, Paris 1999 & 2001.
• Fischer, Steven R., Evidence for Hellenic Dialect in the Phaistos Disk, Herbert Lang (1988), ISBN 3261037032
• Hausmann, Axel, Der Diskus von Phaistos. Ein Dokument aus Atlantis, BoD GmbH (2002), ISBN 3831145482.
• Hempl, George. "The Solving of an Ancient Riddle: Ionic Greek before Homer". Harper's Monthly Magazine (Vol. 122, No. 728 (Jan 1911)): 187–198. {{cite journal}}: |issue= has extra text (help)
• Martin, Adam, Der Diskos von Phaistos - Ein zweisprachiges Dokument geschrieben in einer frühgriechischen Alphabetschrift, Ludwig Auer Verlag (2000), ISBN 3-9807169-1-0.
• Ohlenroth, Derk, Das Abaton des lykäischen Zeus und der Hain der Elaia: Zum Diskos von Phaistos und zur frühen griechischen Schriftkultur, M. Niemeyer (1996), ISBN 3484800089.
• Polygiannakis, Efi, Ο Δισκος της Φαιστού Μιλάει Ελληνικά, Georgiadis, Athens, T. Antikas (trans.)
• Pomerance, Leon, The Phaistos Disk: An Interpretation of Astro- nomical Symbols, Paul Astroms forlag, Goteborg (1976). reviewed by D. H. Kelley in The Journal of Archeoastronomy (Vol II, number 3, Summer 1979)
• Stawell, F. Melian. "An Interpretation of the Phaistos Disk". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs (Vol. 19, No. 97. (Apr., 1911)): 23–29, 32–38. {{cite journal}}: |issue= has extra text (help) JSTOR URL
• Schwartz, Benjamin. "The Phaistos disk". Journal of Near Eastern Studies (Vol. 18, No. 2 (1959)): 105–112. {{cite journal}}: |issue= has extra text (help)

• Undeciphered writing systems