Phaistos Disc decipherment claims

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Phaistos Disc, side A
Phaistos Disc, side B
Hempl's translation of the opening lines of the disc, from Harper's Magazine[1]: p.196 

Many people have claimed to have deciphered 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 semantic but not linguistic in the strict sense: While a semantic decipherment may reveal the intended meaning of the symbols in the inscription, it would not allow us to identify the underlying words or their language.

A large part of the claims are clearly

Anatolian hieroglyphs, Linear B
).

Some approaches attempt to establish a connection with known scripts, either the roughly contemporary

Anatolian
hieroglyphics. Solutions postulating an independent Aegean script have also been proposed.

Linguistic interpretations

Greek

Hempls readings of side A: A-po-su-la-r ke-si-po e-pe-t e-e-se a-po-le-is-tu te-pe-ta-po. (Lo, Xipho the prophetess dedicates spoils from a spoiler of the prophetess.) Te-u-s, a-po-ku-ra. (Zeus guard us.) Vi-ka-na a-po-ri-pi-na la-ri-si-ta a-po-ko-me-nu so-to. (In silence put aside the most dainty portions of the still unroasted animal.) A-te-ne-Mi-me-ra pu-l. (Athene Minerva, be gracious.) A-po-vi-k. (Silence!) A-po-te-te-na-ni-si tu-me. (The victims have been put to death.) A-po-vi-k. (Silence!)

  • F.M. Stawell (1911)[2] (interpretation as Homeric Greek, syllabic writing);
    • side B first; reading inward: side A begins ἄνασσα κῶθί ῥα· ...
    • Not Ionic; B30 is non-sigmatic ἄνασσ' ἰά λῦται; B6 is τᾶ, Μαρὰ, δᾶ–, with four long alphas.
  • Steven R. Fischer (1988)[3] (interpretation as a Greek dialect, syllabic writing);
    • side A first; reading inwards; 02-12 reads E-qe 'hear ye'.[See book Glyph Breaker (1997) for full account][full citation needed]
  • D. Ohlenroth (1996)[4] (interpretation as a Greek dialect, alphabetic writing);
    • side A first; reading outwards; numerous homophonic signs
  • B. Schwarz (1959)
    Mycenean Greek
    , syllabic writing)
  • A. Martin (2000)[6] (interpretation as a Greek-Minoan bilingual text, alphabetic writing)
    • reading outwards;
    • reads only side A as Greek and says side B is Minoan
  • K. & K. Massey (1998)[7] (partial decipherment - interpretation as a Greek dialect, syllabic writing)
    • reading outwards
    • suggest, based on comparisons with Linear B, and a suggestion by linguist Miguel Carrasquer Vidal,[citation needed] that the words marked by slashes are numbers spelled out, so the disk would be a form of receipt for goods, designed to be easily destroyed
  • M.G. Corsini (2008, 2010) (interpretation as proto-Ionic language, syllabic writing); side A first; reading outwards; (Italian) 1348 a.C. Apoteosi di Radamanto.[8][9]

Unknown language

  • G. Owens & J. Coleman (2014) (based on Cretan hieroglyphics, Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B); possibly prayer to a Minoan goddess.[10][11]

"Proto-Ionic"

J. Faucounau (1975)[

proto-Ionic" Greek in syllabic writing.[12]

Reading side A 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 summarized it in two books.[13][14]

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 has distributed the spoil of battle."

Faucounau's solution was critically reviewed by Duhoux (2000),[full citation needed] 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. Most syllabaries would either omit s in both places, or use a syllable beginning with s in both places.

Luwian

Achterberg et al. (2004)

Anatolian hieroglyphic
, reading inwards, side A first. The research group proposes a 14th century date, based on a dating of tablet PH 1, the associated Linear A tablet.

The group reads the oblique stylus-drawn strokes at the end of some words as a 46th glyph, and identify it with the

Tarhunt, in Luwian a W-shaped hieroglyph.[15]

With these and other hypotheses, they arrive at a proposed translation of the text. It would be a

Idomeneus
"), governor of Mesara. The text begins

a-tu mi1-SARU sa+ti / pa-ya-tu / u Nna-sa2-ti / u u-ri / a-tu hi-ya-wa
atu Misari sati Payatu. u Nasati, u uri atu Hiyawa.
"In Mesara is Phaistos. To Nestor, to the great [man] in Ahhiyawa."

Hittite

Egyptian

Semitic

Ideographic


References

  1. ^ a b George Hempl (1911): "The Solving of an Ancient Riddle: Ionic Greek before Homer". Harper's Magazine, volume=122, issue=728, pages=187–198.
  2. ^ Stawell (1911).
  3. ^ Fischer (1988).
  4. ^ Ohlenroth (1986).
  5. ^ Schwarz (1959).
  6. ^ Martin (2000).
  7. ^ Massey, Kevin; Massey, Keith (1998). The Phaistos Disk cracked? (PDF) (Report). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-13. Retrieved 2009-07-31.
  8. ^ Corsini, Marco G. (2008). "L'Apoteosi di Radamanto: ad un secolo dalla scoperta del Disco di Festo" [The Apotheosis of Radamanthus: One century after the discovery of the Phaistos Disc]. Corsinistoria (in Italian). Retrieved 14 November 2022.
  9. ^ Corsini, Marco G. (2010). "La decifrazione della scrittura pittografica di Festòs" [The decypherment of the pictographic writing on the Phaistos Disk]. Corsinistoria. — genesis of his Phaistos Disk decypherment with an abstract in English.
  10. ^ Owens, Gareth; Coleman, John (2008–2018). "Readable? To 'read' the Phaistos Disk?" (PDF). ΤΕΙ Κρήτης. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 December 2018. Retrieved 29 December 2018.
  11. ^ "Ancient disk's mysterious Code finally cracked?". HuffPost. 28 October 2014.
  12. ^ Faucounau, Jean (27 May 2001) [March 2000]. "The Phaistos Disk: A statistical decipherment". Anistoriton. 4 (rev. 5th ed.). Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 15 June 2013.
  13. ^ Faucounau (1999).
  14. ^ Faucounau (2001b).
  15. ^ a b c Winfried Achterberg, Jan Best, Kees Enzler, Lia Rietveld, and Fred Woudhuizen (2004): The Phaistos Disc: A Luwian letter to Nestor. Volume 13 of the Publications of the Henry Frankfort Foundation.
  16. ^ Georgiev (1976).
  17. ^ Aartun (1992).
  18. ^ Gordon, F.G. (1931). Through Basque to Minoan: Transliterations and translations of the Minoan tablets. London, UK: Oxford University Press.

Sources

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phaistos_Disc_decipherment_claims&oldid=1210932470"