Phaistos disc phonetic decipherments implausible

Phaistos Disc: Phonetic Decipherments Implausible Why the disc does not have an alphabetical or syllabic text as recently claimed by researchers.

“Suggested decipherments are legion,” writes Yves Duhoux, on the decipherment claims of the Phaistos disc. The majority of decipherment attempts assume that the text is phonetic. That is each of the symbols have a particular sound, and that the sounds string together to form words.

The ancient idea of reading were often entirely different from ours – the idea being one of reading symbolic forms – and symbols have a whole sense on their own. Symbols combine together to convey more intricate ideas. This pattern is found in the most ancient Egyptian writings, and in the ancient Chinese writing. The sounds of the symbols have evolved through history, in Chinese for instance, while the symbols themselves have retained an analogous sense.

As an independent researcher, having worked researching ancient Chinese script, and ancient Egyptian symbols, the Phaistos disc’s text, I find, is decipherable as a body of symbolic text. The geometry of placement of the symbols in the outer ring, and in the inner spiral, the orientation of the symbols themselves, which vary between phrases, all add to the meaning.

I point out in this article a few flaws with a recent interpretation of the disc – the interpretation of it as the text of a prayer to the mother goddess. The interpretation, like the ones before it, takes the text for a syllabic alphabet. There are two major flaws in the purported decipherment

by Dr. Gareth Owens, and John Coleman, professor of phonetics at Oxford and, that I take this article to point out.

One being that studies have shown the presence of what seems is non-linear text on the disc.

The symbol on the outer ring, say , forms a pattern, of a rather regular octagon. See image below. If we assume this is an alphabetical text, the possibility of such a pattern forming by chance are quite low. That is, imagine writing up a prayer, or a text with a historical theme and finding all the alphabet “A” s in the text forming an octagon. Several other patterns exist like this. The symbol

occurs always adjacent to , and when in the middle of a text, always

appears between and . The symbol occurs only at the beginning of the phrases. And several other such patterns exist. If alphabetical, it might be as if there are rules saying where an alphabet must appear, and that an alphabets ought always appears adjacent to another, etc.

That is not a quality we find with alphabetical texts. But symbolic bonding can exist, that generates such patterns – if the text is a set of pure symbols. Then patterns then covey meaning

in the reading, and is not dismissed as mere random.

Image source: Author’s drawing on a graphical representation of the disc from Wikimedia Commons.

Researchers have applied themselves to the question - of if these patterns on the disc can be understood as mere coincidence. For instance, a study published in the journal Statistica Neerlandica, in 2011, applies itself to this. The research published in the article, ten Cate, A. (2011), Patterns on an ancient artifact: a coincidence?. Statistica Neerlandica, 65: 116–124. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9574.2010.00478.x, study a particular kind of non-linear geometry in the text. The adjacency patterns of what is labelled the ‘plumed head’ glyph, between the spirals of the disc – say, as occurs between phrase 1, Side A and phrase 14, Side A. The labels used here are based on the generally accepted Louis Godart numbering of the phrases.

Image source: A. (2011), Patterns on an ancient artifact: a coincidence?. Statistica Neerlandica, 65: 116– 124. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9574.2010.00478.x The study states, “A statistical analysis in this article shows what it is not: it is not a onedimensional text, since there are relations between the signs in adjacent windings of the spiral.

Three patterns of such relations have been identified. A Monte Carlo simulation of one of them has been performed, using a model of the spiral form. It is concluded that the probability of this pattern being coincidental is small, well below the conventional threshold.”

If the probability of this pattern “being coincidental is small, well below the conventional threshold,” it implies that the probability of the disc’s text being an alphabetic one, or a syllabic one,, a string of linear text is small as well. An alphabetical string such as a prayer is a onedimensional text. To repeat, if it is “not a one-dimensional text” as the Statistica Neerlandica article says, the text of the disc cannot be alphabetic, or syllabic. The text, then, cannot be a mere one-dimensional string representing sounds.

Further, if the geometrical patterns are not random, a decipherment must explain patterns such as the placement of a few phrases in the outer ring of the disc, and the placement of other phrases in the inner spiral. And how the geometrical placement adds to the meaning conveyed

by the phrases and symbols themselves.

The recent research, by Dr. Owens and Professor Coleman points out a phrase, as the key phrase or, “The keyword,” pointing out three instances of it.

The researchers attribute the same sound to the three phrases, I – QE- KU- RJA and thus the same sense, “pregnant mother” and/or “goddess.”

The purported three key-phrases, or keywords, on finer observation, we find, are not, in fact, symbolically the same. In one of them, phrase 22, Side A, the orientation of the bird is upside down and the direction of flight is from to . Giving the phrase a distinct symbolic sense, and thus a distinct meaning, from the other two phrases.

Compare below phrase 22, and phrase 16, of side A, which the researchers club together as one “keyword.” The bird is positioned to convey two different meanings, by virtue of its orientation, and direction of flight.

A decipherment must explain, or, at least, explain-away, the presence of such intricacies, and geometrical patterns. Owens and Coleman fail to do so.

In ancient language, such as the Egyptian, we find that the original writing were hieroglyphic – and not meant to be read as a phonetic or alphabetic system of writing – by stringing together sounds. Later, a subset of the hieroglyphs were taken and attributed sounds so that language could be used to serve more plebian purposes, than to convey high esoteric ideas. Take the English letter N. The form may have its origin in a water glyph, or the form of a water serpent, with all the associated esoteric ideas. The name of the glyph may have had an initial sound ”N,” and for that may have been chosen to represent the sound N, as alphabetical scripts were developed, later in history, for plebian purposes.

The analogous forms in Linear A, and Linear B, the forms resembling that on the Phaistos disc,

would have resulted from a syllabic borrowing – a borrowing into Linear A, and B, of more ancient symbols, to represent sound. As the alphabet N appeared in scripts. To understand what the ancient Egyptians meant by the water glyph, or the imagery of a serpent, from the sense of N in English, or by saying the hieroglyph means the sound “N” and to read a wall of hieroglyphs as a linear body of phonetic alphabets, would often be just error. The kind of error that Dr. Dr. Gareth Owens and Professor John Coleman seem to have slipped into, in their reading of the disc.

Dilip Rajeev is a researcher into the nature of ancient language, and the author of books into ancient Chinese writing, and also the author of “The Decipherment of the Phaistos Disc, http://www.amazon.com/The-Decipherment-Of-Phaistos-Disc/dp/1502910578 ISBN: 9781502910578,” in which he offers his interpretation and reading of the disc as set of hieroglyphs.