I don’t often cover the Phaistos Disk here, simply because it’s almost certainly more of a linguistic mystery than a cipher mystery as such. However, I was particularly taken by some aspects of the analysis offered by Keith & Kevin Massey, so it seemed well worth discussing here.
Incidentally, despite their complementary-yet-competing philological interests, the twins didn’t start their Phaistos Disk adventure together. But, as they put it, “for Kevin to collaborate with his brother Keith was finally inevitable, like dancing with your mad aunt at a wedding reception.”
Their Chapters 1-4 summarize a whole load of Phaistos research, while trying to argue for a link between various early European scripts (Cypriotic, Linear B, etc). Their Chapter 5 (pp.48-56) argues for a left-to-right reading of the Phaistos Disk (but not quite as convincingly as they hope, I think). But after all that, their Chapter 6 discards pretty much all their preceding linguistic analysis and instead proposes the hypothesis that Phaistos Disk words with slashes are actually numbers. And that’s essentially where they finish.
Now, for all the twins’ obvious linguistic smarts, I have to say I just don’t buy into this – at least, not in the way it’s currently presented. And here’s my argument why:
(1) The way that the signs are physically imprinted / stamped into the soft unfired surface of the disk is clearly systematic (i.e. it’s a consciously prepared set of shapes, not one that’s being improvised on a shape-by-shape basis), and the choice of those shapes forms part of the same system.
(2) Furthermore, the whole disk had to be fired once and once only. Hence without much doubt the imprints on both sides had to have been made at the same time using the same basic system.
(3) Regardless of whatever direction you believe it was written in, there are substantial word differences between the two sides. Many words repeat on the same side (in fact, there’s even a three-word pattern that repeats on Side A), yet only a single measly three-imprint word repeats between sides.
(4) There is an imbalance between the shapes on the two sides. The most obvious difference is the frequency of the plumed head imprint: 14 instances on Side A but only 5 instances on Side B. Yet there are plenty of others, such as the beehive (once on Side A but five times on Side B). Indeed, the most visually striking difference is the twelve { PLUMED_HEAD + SHIELD } pairs on Side A compared to the single pair on Side B.
These are the basic observations I personally work from, and the problem is that I just don’t see how these square with the number system suggested by the Masseys. Whatever the actual significance of the slashes, it doesn’t seem to me to coincide with any obvious difference in the language as used (because the PLUMED_HEAD + SHIELD pairs occur just about as often in slashed words as in unslashed ones): and (longhand) numbers are almost always a notably differently-structured part of any language.
For me, the big issue is that Side A is significantly more structured and repetitive than Side B. Also, its word lengths have much greater variance (i.e. Side A has both longer and shorter words than are found on Side B), and they use a different mix of shapes. Yet slashed words occur just as often on both sides. I just don’t get it, me.
I suspect that Side A and Side B use different kinds of language (ritual, performative, poetic, pragmatic, whatever) to assist very different functions: and probably courtly functions at that. But seeing it as a homogeneous number container for (say) Cretan tax accounting seems far too mundane. Bean counters never touched this artefact, no they didn’t! 
I’m staggered to see that I wrote ‘procession’ – (blushing emoticon) – precession, of course.
And Peter – I look forward to reading it.
http://voynichimagery.wordpress.com/
Peter: did you ever see my Mehen-based follow-up to that post?
http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2011/12/25/the-ultimate-christmas-game-the-phaistos-disk
http://www.nickpelling.com/
Peter: it’ll take more than the publication of a book to remove a cipher mystery from these pages. Even my own book!
http://www.nickpelling.com/
Diane, you are right that Pomerance’s inuition about the astronomical meanings of some signs on the Disk was closest as it turns out that the strider-with slash-and-hoof as well as the “falcon-and serpent-with-slash” combinations are clearly rotating around a common pole when you fold up the rejoined paths from both sides into the single path of the gameboard shown on the home page of my website. Moreover, these signs in that configuration fit the actual constellations in the northern sky.
I am aware that Nick Pelling discussed and dismissed in 2011 my interpretation of that Disk as the path for a board game, but he did so clearly based on second- or even thirdhand accounts. I am publishing the full story in a few weeks under the title “Solomon’s Sky”, but you can read the otherwise not accessible online version on the pages beginning at http://phaistosgame.com/Phaistos00titlepage.htm.
I hope that you and Nick will enjoy this story even though it now removes this Disk from the list of “ciphermysteries”.
http://phaistosgame.com
Diane, you are right that Pomerance’s inuition about the astronomical meanings of some signs on the Disk was closest. as it turns out that the strider-with slash-and-hoof as well as the “falcon-and serpent-with-slash” combinations are clearly rotating around a common pole when you fold up the rejoined paths from both sides into the single path of the gameboard shown on the home page of my website. Moreover, these signs in that configuration fit the actual constellations in the northern sky.
I know that Nick Pelling discussed and dismissed in 2011 my interpretation of those paths as a board game, but he clearly did so based on secondhand accounts about it. My book with the full documentation is coming out in a few weeks, but you can examine the online version on the not otherwise accessible pages beginning at http://phaistosgame.com/Phaistos00titlepage.htm.
I hope you and Nick will enjoy reading about the actual function of the Disk, and the confirmation of Pomerance’s intuition that there was an astronomical angle to it.
http://phaistosgame.com
well, for what it’s worth, a number of these have been constant in reference for not less than six millennia and doubtless longer before the introduction of writing.
Constant, even with allowance made for the slow transfer of many names – presumably under effects of procession and proper motion.
The bird ‘affixed’ is Aquila. Always has been.
Flower and dotted disc usually refer (alternately according to culture) to Canopus or Pleiades. In this case I think is Canopus. In some very few cases the curved line of stars between Orion and the East, and a star in Canis major was represented as a shield, but the usage appears to be relatively late and I shouldn’t expect it here.
The mace (top line) was always the star near Orion at the point of vernal equinox – the imagery shifts over the millennia to try to keep that so, and finally stops trying about the time the mace ceases to appear in the hand of Orion.
As Graves notably said of the Sirens’ song, it is not beyond conjecture – and more importantly not beyond research.
Might need years’ work, or simply advice from an astronomer interested in the antecedents of his science.
I very much doubt that the disk was intended to be read as anything so prosaic as a bit of prose. I should expect something more Homeric.
D
http://voynichimagery.wordpress.com/
For Classical Greek, yes. Which is why the Number of the Beast is, apparently, χξς and not OOOOOO – - – - – - I I I I I I as it would have been in Mycenaean numerals
But we also know the Mycenaean words for the numerals these symbols represented. For example, we know that the root for ’4′ was qe-to-ro, cognate to the Latin ‘quattuor’ which gives the English ‘quad-’ prefix (quadruped, quadratic etc). The Masseys seem to be claiming to have found the same root in their ‘k-t-r-y’, although even I’m very suspicious of the initial labiovelar being represented by a ‘k’.
*removes linguistics anorak*
SirHubert: but anyway, weren’t Greek / Hebrew / Aramaic / Syriac numbers just letters? :-p
Here’s a stunningly good link to Minoan / Cretan numbering systems I think you’ll like:-
http://minoablog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/exploring-cretan-numeral-system.html
http://www.nickpelling.com/
I’ll go further than that. I think this ‘decipherment’ fails on just about every level. But it’s still instructive to see how they got where they did.
SirHubert: mmmm… [goes off to check]… yes, I think you’re right. All the same, I don’t think they’ve nailed this yet.
http://www.nickpelling.com/
Yes – Chapter 5 seems to end by saying ‘Everything up to this point is wrong’. But the the values from which they produce the Indo-European numbers in Chapter 6 still come from the acrophonic/’hey, it looks like this letter here’ approaches, as far as I can see.
Rich: long time no hear, hope you’re ok! A handful of people have suggested this, but the fact that there are still quite a lot of low-level patterns shared between the sides (including a three-letter word) perhaps points a little more strongly to them both being part of the same thing. A bit like Currier A and Currier B in the Voynich, I guess.
http://www.nickpelling.com/
As the two sides differ so much, has it been suggested that this could be a Rosetta stone type thing, with the same information on both sides, in different languages? Not that it would help, as there is not a known language version… or would it, if that were the case, do you think?
http://proto57.wordpress.com/
SirHubert: unless I’ve misunderstood their paper, the Masseys basically discarded all their prior reasoning in favour of a “these slashed words seem to be numbers” hypothesis. Which isn’t really very historical or logical, as far as I can tell.
http://www.nickpelling.com/
I think many scholars would be extremely surprised to find that the Phaistos Disk contained a text in an Indo-European language. In fairness, they were pretty surprised when the language behind Linear B turned out to be Greek, but the Masseys’ suggestion seems a surprise too far. The reconstructions of proto-IE/proto-Greek numbers look wobbly to me too, and it’s interesting that they haven’t got a specialist in this field backing them up (which is why Ventris approached Chadwick).
The Masseys’ proposed values seem to come from two main sources: the acrophonic principle (aargh) and the equally flaky ‘this letter looks a bit like that one in another old script so they must be the same’ argument. Which is why Greek ‘y’ has the same value as French ‘y’, English ‘c’ has the same sound as Russian ‘c’, but an Arabic ‘r’ looks the same as an English ‘r’ written upside down, so Arabic is written from bottom to top and left to right. Apologies for the sarcasm, but the Masseys actually argue that Ventris would have done better to make a few random guesses at letters and see what happened. Which completely misses an absolutely fundamental point about deciphering unknown scripts:
Ventris (and Kober before him) identified patterns in Linear B in a way which made absolutely no assumptions about the underlying language. Ventris was able to represent the syllabary on a grid showing which Linear B characters shared consonants and vowels but which assumed no values for either. Only when he finally had a complete grid did he try to assign specific values, which he derived from place-names on the very good grounds that these often survived other linguistic changes. Finding that this gave recognizable Greek was as much of a surprise for him as for anyone else.
I’m afraid that some of the attempts on the Voynich remind me too much of the Massey’s line of thinking.
oh – and there’s a clay map of Africa from Coptic Egypt. More exactly a sherd used that way. Its reference isn’t widely recognised but it’s plain enough – and adds the animals which can be found around the coasts. A true arca noe.
http://voynichimagery.wordpress.com/
I still think Pomerance was closest, but I don’t know there’s any necessary connection here to phonetic values.
I’m inclined to read it as a kind of itinerary, but an astronomical one ~ the usual way of describing a journey under sail: by a sequence of pairs or triangulated sets.
I see no particular value in having a clay compass: you either knew your directions and their stars or you didn’t. Could be the equivalent of an examination-paper I supposed. (Look at the tablet you have been given and name the ship’s destination). Polynesian islanders used twig-maps to teach, and to describe a route.
http://voynichimagery.wordpress.com/